The Quirky Facts
Lots of research on brain games focus on which ones are best for improving various functions, but the research results that most affirm my own views indicate that 1) variety is the spice of life, and 2) socialization can have as strong an impact on maintaining cognitive health as solving a crossword puzzle.
First, the brain craves novelty. If you love a particular word game like crossword puzzles, by all means, keep solving them, but try other forms of brain stimulation, too. The key finding in a widely quoted study by researchers at the University of South Florida in Tampa noted that participating in a variety of tasks seemed “to increase cognitive reserve capacity and resilience, leading to better performance on cognitively challenging tasks.” 

2) But my interest in this topic stems from a study completed a decade earlier and led by Oscar Ybarra of the University of Michigan in which the researchers found that socialization was as important as specific tasks. “[E]ngaging in brief (10 minute) conversations in which participants were simply instructed to get to know another person resulted in boosts to their subsequent performance on an array of common cognitive tasks.” The benefits were equal to an “intellectual” activity like a crossword puzzle but did not apply when conversations had a competitive edge, so if you don’t have a chance to get to know someone new, talk to a person you know and like.

The Quirky Observations
I like word play. I am abysmal at crossword puzzles and anything that involves scrambled letters. When playing Scrabble, I frustrate my competitive fellow players because I am more interested in filling up the board than scoring points. But in addition to puns, I enjoy odd words and the vagaries of English spelling among many other exercises. The first three examples below are taken from Gyles Brandreth’s 1980 book, The Joy of Lex. The mug meme at right is another word play example of spelling exceptions found at https://me.me/t/i-before-e.

Old, odd, playful words:
Croodle is a faint humming like the low music of birds
Fadoodle is nonsense, something foolish

Oronym is an unusual word that defines sentences which can be read in two ways that essentially sound the same but have different meanings, such as these:

Reading in the library is sometimes allowed.
Reading in the library is sometimes aloud.

The stuffy nose can lead to problems.
The stuff he knows can lead to problems.

A few words that seem to have opposite meanings, but don’t always.

A slim chance is the same as a fat chance.
To drink up, means to down your drink.
To fill out a form is to fill it in.

More vagaries of English spelling:
Have you ever tried creating a poem with words ending in “ough”? It’s hard to rhyme cough, through, bough, rough, and dough, but who would imagine that you could rhyme words spelled as differently as prize, buys, cries, wise, and thighs?

Hearty Thanks and a New Shameless Request
Again, thank you to all who congratulated me for winning a National Mature Media Award as announced on LinkedIn and the Wiser Now Facebook page. My main goal now is to increase my readership. If you are willing and/or able to help by saying nice things about WNW that I can put on the Wiser Now website, helping me find a sponsor or media syndicate, or ordering a customized version to your organization, please send me a note or those kind words at Kathy@WiserNow.com.