Brain Games for Seniors: Choosing Ones You'll Actually Enjoy

Do brain games actually help seniors?

Honestly: nobody can promise you that puzzles protect memory or delay decline, and you should be wary of any product that does. What can be said plainly is that puzzles are an enjoyable way to spend time genuinely engaged — reading, recalling, reasoning, noticing — and enjoyable engagement is a fine thing in anyone's day, at any age. That is reason enough, and it is the only claim we make.

The practical corollary: since the honest benefit lives in the doing, the best brain game is simply the one you'll happily return to tomorrow. Enjoyment is what keeps a habit alive, and a habit is where any benefit of practice lives. A 'scientifically designed' training app abandoned after a joyless week does less for anyone than a crossword loved daily for a decade.

What should I look for in a brain game?

Look for five things: a familiar format, a genuinely gentle easy setting, no timers, print that respects your eyes, and variety across the week. Each one decides whether the game becomes a pleasure or a chore.

• Familiar formats: crosswords, word searches, sudoku and pairs need no rulebook — the game starts immediately, which matters more with every passing year
• A gentle floor: 'easy' should mean genuinely easy, not 'slightly less fiendish'. Test it: if the easiest setting ever makes you feel stupid, the game has failed, not you
• No timers and no penalties: a clock turns a pastime into a test, and a test is the opposite of rest
• Print that respects your eyes: large type and high contrast on screen and paper — see our plain definition of large print in the size guide below
• Variety across the week: words one day, numbers the next, memory the day after — different puzzles exercise different pleasures

What should I avoid in brain-training apps?

Avoid anything that measures you when you didn't ask to be measured: leaderboards against strangers, 'brain age' scores, streaks that scold you for missing a day, and difficulty that ramps up whether you wanted it to or not. Avoid, too, the crowded free apps where adverts interrupt mid-puzzle — the interruption tax lands heaviest on exactly the concentration the puzzle was meant to be exercising.

• Grand cognitive promises on the packaging — the surest sign of a product selling anxiety rather than pleasure
• Puzzles so hard they end in defeat more often than satisfaction; difficulty is not a virtue
• Anything needing an account, a subscription, or an app-store password before the first puzzle appears

How Puzzle Pastime approaches it

Six gentle puzzles a day, big print throughout, no timers anywhere, nothing to download and no account needed to play. Finish one over a cup of tea and you've had a good sit-down with your mind pleasantly busy — which is all we promise, and quite a lot really.