bodner088

Did you know that navigating your way through mazes can increase your total memory, recall and cognition? Did you know that this simple recreational activity (which only requires a pencil and a mind) also delays the outset of senile dementia , enhances your ability to focus, improves your abstract reasoning , improves your ability to plan and carries with it untold and countless other benefits. Mazes are wonderful mental muscle builders. Individuals tend to attack mazes (on paper or on sketch screen applications on mobile devices ) using any one of several approaches: 1) Brute Force Adherents, who only make a cursory inspection of the maze, followed by high-speed trial and error attempts, with each attempt usually getting than the one which preceded it and terminated at an earlier stopping point; 2) Center - Out Examiners, who view the whole maze and first seek to identify the center, and psychologically work their way outward to the entryway of the maze befor putting stylus to scree...

Solving problems involving mazes builds intelligence, keeps you sharp, wards off dementia, clears (broadens) old neural pathways and paves new ones, greatly expands your possibility thinking abilities, decision making abilities and your ability to visualize using your imagination. As an added bonus, working through mazes is a meditative-type exercise and actually helps discipline your ability to focus without 'wandering off' [like your eccentric Uncle Ned at a family barbecue]. Mazes are actually pictorially analogous to the structure of the physical brain. Navigating a maze might just be similar (on a very small and simplified scale) to navigating neuronal corridors of the mind... Another amazing (pun intended) by-product of the repeated exercise of escaping (i.e., running through or navigating) mazes is that despite the element of trial and error which may necessarily be involved  -- you find a way that doesn't work, go back to the point where you believe that you m...

Image ( somewhat distracting and annoying ) via Wikipedia Progress, from the starting line to the finish line , can occur in many different ways. Some start the race slowly but speed up toward the end, using reserves of strength; some jog along at a steady, even pace; still others virtually go into orbit at the start and burn out quickly to a vomitous, spleen-gripping, huff-and-puff walk. Since we are Braintenance , we will choose a five kilometer race, in which three mathematicians are competing. Each has a distinct running pattern, strategy or (ulp!) formula for spanning the distance. The question to answer regarding each runner is simply this: "How long will it take him (in minutes ) to reach the finish line to receive his souvenir Tee-shirt?" Of course, these Ts are only available in one size...XXL. Here's the lineup of our contestants : Racer 1 :  This fellow runs (on average) one kilometer every 18 minutes. Racer 2 :  This fellow starts the race at a rate of one ki...

Image (somewhat distracting and annoying) via Wikipedia Progress, from the starting line to the finish line , can occur in many different ways. Some start the race slowly but speed up toward the end, using reserves of strength; some jog along at a steady, even pace; still others virtually go into orbit at the start and burn out quickly to a vomitous, spleen-gripping, huff-and-puff walk. Since we are Braintenance, we will choose a five kilometer race, in which five mathematicians are competing. Each has a distinct running pattern, strategy or (ulp!) formula for spanning the distance. The question to answer regarding each runner is simply this: "How long will it take him (in minutes ) to reach the finish line to receive his souvenir Tee-shirt?" Here's the lineup of our contestants : Racer 1:  This fellow runs (on average) one kilometer every 18 minutes. Racer 2:  This fellow starts the race at a rate of one kilometer every 12 minutes, but his pace declines by 10% per kilom...

A riddle is a word puzzle which is designed to challenge (i.e., exercise) your mind. You use memory, associative intelligence, logic, vocabulary, semantics and a variety of other skills, all in motion at the same time in order to "solve" a riddle. I'll provide you with some mind-expanding (and highly-entertaining) riddle links at the end of this post. You sharpen your intellectual and verbal skill sets (together! yes!) every time you work through one of these cunning conundrums [ hey...isn't that alliteration he's using ?]. Douglas E Castle (my third-person, holier-than-thou-sounding eponymous alter-ego) prescribes at least one to five good challenging repetitions ("brain crunches," if you're Jared DiCarmine, or some other rising star in the fitness guru firmament) daily. Following are two horrific examples of genuinely groan-worthy mind-poppers {you may wish to have children and persons with cardiac conditions or a propensity toward seizures leave...