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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...

Scan of the poem "Anagram" from the 1633 edition of George Herbert's The Temple. Source: http://www.ccel.org/h/herbert/temple/Anagram.html (Photo credit: Wikipedia ) As my English Literature Professor at State University once told us in a lecture, " They ain't no disputin' da facts! " Working with anagrams , finding analogies, as well as performing some deciphering tasks [often cleverly disguised as games !] will build your associative intelligence. Your associative intelligence has to do with 1 ) your ability to generalize from an example; 2 ) your ability to recognize similarities among objects in groups; and 3 ) the sped with which your miraculously Braintenance-enhanced mind is ability to make these identifications, generalizations and associations. Anagrams (paired with secret de-coding keys) have been the basis for numerous encrypted messages through the ages. For you Harry Potter fans , how about Lord Voldemort ? So doggone obvious. There is eve...

Your mind is a muscle . The more that you use it, the stronger it becomes. Also, as in a regimen of physical exercise , you must not only increase the resistance (the Braintenance analogical equivalent for lifting progressively heavier weights would be solving more complex problems), but you must "confuse" the muscle (the Braintenance analogical equivalent for this mixing up the order and nature of exercises, or avoidance of excessively predictable patterning, would be to engage in different kinds of thought using different processing skills). For example, instead of doing Sudoku or crossword puzzles every day, you might "mix in" algebra problems, memorization and recall exercises, perceptual challenges, creative multi-sensorial visualization, meditation, acquiring and using new knowledge (vocabulary, trivial facts, historical perspectives, math formulas), mechanical reasoning, cause-and-effect logic, extrapolation and other mental muscle-builders. In caring for...

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...

You'd like to be more intelligent, more successful, more respected and admired. You'd also like to eliminate stress, feel absolutely comfortable and be endlessly creative. In order to dso this, you must master your mind. You must train your brain. This only takes moments a day. Simply go to http://braintenance.blogspot.com/ , scroll around, and use our brain gym. Having said this, I must ask you a question: What expression is as ridiculous as " It takes one to know one." ? The answer (or at least the most popularly selected answer amongst a group of 4 people polled while I waited for my daughter at a train station ) was, " The more that things change, the more they remain the same. " The first expression is childish and follows no particular line of logic. The second, however is inherently conflictory and genuinely [if analyzed] meaningless. It cancels itself out. My personal favorite stupid, irreversible, oxymoronic expression is this classic: "LESS ...