Everyone loves a good challenge. When it comes to training our minds, challenges are exactly what we require! Luckily, brain teasers for adults have become a hit in the online world, and they aren’t just fun to play, they sharpen our minds too!
Overview
One of the major benefits for young adults who engage in brain teaser games is that they demonstrate improvements in their brain processing speed, executive functions, and working memory.
Furthermore, older adults who take part in 1-hour brain training sessions are 48% less likely to develop cognitive decline or dementia over the next 10 years. Keeping these facts in mind, it’s clear why brain teaser riddles are rising in popularity, and if you haven’t jumped on the brainteaser bandwagon yet, it’s time you did!
We’re here to help guide the way to this magnificent world by providing you with a list of the 10 best brain teaser apps and puzzle games for adults. Before we dive in, let’s talk about the benefits of these games and how they can boost your mind.
Can Brain Teasers and Puzzle Games for Adults Really Improve Your Mind?
Sure, a brain teaser app is fun and engaging, but can it really improve your mind? Well, that’s something only you can decide!
You see, brain teasers for adults are designed to increase your potential for learning and processing information. The more often you play these games, the higher your brain function.
The best brain teaser apps today are integrated with the latest in cognitive science, neuroscience, and logic that sharpen your mind and help you absorb information.
However, the key here is your participation. These brain teasers and puzzles are designed to improve your brain, but they won’t be able to do so if you don’t actively participate.
Luckily, participation is easy as these games are not only based on science, but they are also fun and engaging (like all modern-day games!)
Some key areas of our minds that a brain teaser app aims to improve are:
Memory
Solving Brain teasers improves our short-term memory as they reinforce connections between our brain cells and improve our mental speed.
These games will often require you to remember things and before you know it, you’ll become better at retaining key pieces of information like never before!
Problem-Solving Skills:
Brain teasers for adults also help develop excellent problem-solving skills. Through puzzle games, you learn to figure out how to fit the pieces/words into their respective spaces.
If you do that regularly, your visual and spatial reasoning skills improve, which in turn leads to excellent problem-solving skills.
Critical Thinking Skills:
One of the most valuable aspects of these apps is that they significantly sharpen your logic and reasoning.
These games activate different parts of our brains, which in turn leads to developing wonderful analytical and critical thinking skills.
Mood Enhancement:
Apart from the direct benefits to our brain, brain teasers and puzzle games also significantly improve our mood by producing dopamine.
Dopamine is a chemical that regulates mood, memory, and concentration. This improved mood translates to confidence in various areas of our lives.
Increased Focus:
Developing focus is an essential life skill that can lead you to great success.
Brain teaser games help you get more focused by making you engage with the games in a way like never before.
Stress Relief:
Finally, these games don’t only improve our minds by adding positive elements, they also eliminate negative elements like stress!
These games have been argued to provide the same benefits as meditating. They take away the stress of everyday life and replace it with a sense of peace that lowers your heart rate and blood pressure.
Why not try a brain teaser app yourself and experience the benefits?
What Qualities Make Up the Best Brain Teaser Apps?
Humans have been trying to train their brains for centuries. For example, one of Plato’s famous beliefs was that practicing arithmetic could boost general intelligence.
Brain teasers and puzzles have been used for these tasks since as early as the Middle Ages. However, the introduction of brain teasers for adults has taken things to the next level.
Most brain training apps stick to similar formats. You can expect a collection of mini-games that will test your mental skills in different ways and display graphs to show how you’re doing over time.
Some of the top qualities that make up the best brain teaser and puzzle apps are as follows:
Various Games:
One common quality all the best brain teaser apps have is their varied collection of games that target different areas of the mind such as memory, logic, problem-solving, speed, language, and more.
Carefully Picked Games:
The games you will play on these apps are always carefully picked based on your preferences. The idea is to ensure you’re having fun while learning!
Personalized Challenges:
Another key quality that makes the best brain teaser apps stand out is their ability to develop personalized challenges based on your preferences and training habits.
Detailed Training Insights:
These apps also provide you with detailed training insights by helping you learn about your strengths and weaknesses as you progress through the games.
10 Best Brain Teasers and Puzzle Games For Adults
You’ll find some top-quality picks below that are known to work miracles when it comes to developing your brain! Let’s take a look:
Lumosity
- Price: Premium subscription costs $11.99 a month or $59.99 a year.
- Category: Memory, Attention, and Speed
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 40+
Lumosity is hands down one of the best brain teasers for adults available in the online gaming industry. They offer over 40 different brain games to provide diversity in training your brain.
These include options in memory games, logic games, problem-solving games, math games, language games, puzzles, and more!
Furthermore, you’ll also find a ‘fit-test’ that will help you compare how you performed to other players in the world. This added layer of competition makes the game even more fun and encourages players to give it their best shot.
The best part is that the app will also provide you tips and tricks on becoming a better player, and improve your learning accuracy.
It may be slightly more expensive compared to its competitors, but the extra money is worth it as Lumosity devises a daily program for you equipped with stat tracking to highlight your improvement over time.
This brain teaser app is available on both Android and iOS devices.
Elevate
- Price: Premium costs $4.99 a month or $39.99 a year
- Category: Memory, Attention, and Speed
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Multiplayer
- Games: 35+
Without a doubt, Elevate is one of the top contenders when it comes to the best brain teasers for adults. Not only does it create a convenient brain workout calendar for you, but it also makes sure to track your progress and offers adaptive difficulty progression that allows your brain to get sharper.
The visuals are clear and simple and there are over 35 different brain training games to test your cognitive abilities. The games are of various categories including focus, memory, math, and other mental skills.
With your workout goals defined, all you have to do is follow the workout routine and watch your brain get smarter than ever.
This brain teaser game is available on both Android and iOS devices.
Peak
- Price: Premium costs $4.99 a month or $34.99 a year
- Category: Focus, Agility, and Memory
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 40+
Popularly rated as the ‘Best Android App’ in 2016, Peak offers over 40 brain teaser riddles that work to improve memory, mental agility, focus, concentration, and more.
Peak generates a personalized workout plan for players; however, the players can choose to play different games in the ‘Premium’ version.
The recommendation is to play these brain training games for 3 days a week and Peak lets you select the days that you want to train.
Furthermore, your cognitive performance is tracked through individual game performance statistics and even overall performance statistics in each of the 5 cognitive functions.
The games are fun and exceptionally designed, each focused on blending the world of brain training and gaming.
This brain training app is available on both Android and iOS devices.
CogniFit
- Price: Premium costs $29.99 a month or $169.99 a year
- Category: BrainFog and Memory
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 60+
CogniFit offers brain training riddles in the form of several minigames (up to 60). Each is designed to train more than 20 cognitive skills, including memory, planning, auditory perception, and hand-eye coordination.
Every brain training tool in this app has been validated by scientists, and the efficiency of their tools has been established through studies of the general population.
One of the most fascinating bits is that CogniFit provides tools that healthcare professionals can use to study and assess how cognitive function works in patients.
The games are fun and stimulate the brain, plus every aspect of your performance is tracked and average scores are calculated for the games you play.
You can download this game on both Android and iOS devices.
NeuroNation
- Price: Premium costs $84 a year
- Category: Memory and Concentration
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 30+
Not only does NeuroNation provide some of the best brain teasers for adults, it also has a very catchy name!
This app has been developed in Germany and is backed by clinical research on reasoning, memory, perception, and numbers.
There are over 30 targeted exercises that focus on various key cognitive aspects and allow you to improve memory and concentration while increasing your thought speed.
NeuroNation is a wonderful tool for those looking to sharpen their minds or cognitive skills.
This app is available on both Android and iOS devices.
Good Sudoku
- Price: Free
- Category: Memory, Problem-Solving, Logic
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 1
Sudoku is one of the finest games to improve your problem-solving and decision-making skills. Good Sudoku, designed by Zach Gage, takes things up a notch by teaching you both the basics and the advanced techniques of the game.
The app has a clear and clean design with effective gameplay that comes together to form the perfect brain teaser riddles.
There are pre-made puzzles and daily challenges, including alternate modes like ‘Eternal’ or ‘Arcade’ that work on testing your ability to solve grids without making a single mistake!
The best part is that you can even import/create your own puzzles and try them out!
Unlike the previous games on this list, Good Sudoku is only available on iOS devices.
Memorado (GEIST)
- Price: Premium costs $4.49 a month or $69.99 a year
- Category: Memory and Logic
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Multiplayer
- Games: 15+
Memorado is one of the best brain teaser apps for those who want to boost their memory game.
It has over 15 brain teaser games that focus on tasks such as remembering names, understanding complex problems, sticking to to-do lists, and more.
The game is designed to help individuals stay calm in hectic situations and focus on the tasks in front of them. The game offers personalized workouts geared towards boosting memory and concentration skills.
Plus, Memorado also offers the chance to challenge your friends to find out who’s the smartest!
Memorado is available on both Android and iOS devices.
BrainTurk
- Price: Premium costs $3.99 a lifetime
- Category: Memory and Language
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 40+
BrainTurk is the lowest priced option on our list as it offers over 40+ brain games for $3.99 for an entire lifetime!
The games are designed to sharpen your attention skills and increase cognitive memory. There are games that focus entirely on language skills and address psychological barriers that slow down brain performance.
The best part about BrainTurks brain teaser riddles is that they are personalized according to your brain, which makes the games highly engaging for users.
This brain teaser app is available on both Android and iOS devices.
Brainwell
- Price: Premium costs $9.99 a month
- Category: Memory and Concentration
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 50+
Offering over 50+ scientifically designed games, Brainwell works to improve memory, cognitive functions, and concentration in adults and children alike.
The brain teaser games provided are based on advanced neuroscience research and offer custom training challenges designed specifically for the user playing.
The games exercise over 6 cognitive areas and work to improve memory and concentration over 7-14-day specific programs.
This app is available on both Android and iOS devices.
BrainHQ
- Price: Premium costs $12.95 a month and $86 a year
- Category: Attention, Brain Speed, and Memory
- Multiplayer or Solo Play: Solo Play
- Games: 25+
The final game on our list of best brain teaser apps is BrainHQ, often referred to as ‘Posit Science’.
Brain HQ offers over 25 games that focus on key areas such as attention, brain speed, memory, and even people skills.
Those who use the BrainHQ app will come across dozens of challenging exercises. Every one of these is wonderful to sharpen the brain (such as memory tests).
Furthermore, every part of your performance gets tracked so that you can see the results later and see how you are doing!
This app is available on both Android and iOS devices.
There you have it! New apps are being developed all the time, so search for keywords like brain teasers or mind training to find more. If you are interested in other educational games, check out our in-depth articles on this topic. We have a whole category under Gaming that is dedicated to learning games. Here are just a couple to whet your appetite:
- Should You Play Video Games? Exploring the Impact of Gaming
- Using RPG Board Games For Social-Emotional Learning
- 12 Best Unique Board Games (List)
Farah Jassawalla is a technology enthusiast with a keen interest in AI, ML, and anything digital. Her passion for technology extends into her work as she currently manages the blog and social media for one of Canada’s most awarded tech and IT companies, in addition to consulting and writing for other brands. She’s an avid reader, writer, and researcher who is always looking out for the next big update in the digital world.
