From Crosswords to Escape Games: 5 Fun Ways to Exercise Your Brain

People regularly hit the gym to keep their bodies in the best possible shape, but it’s just as important to put your grey matter through its paces. Without exercising your mind, you’ll start to lose neuroplasticity, your brain cells will stop talking to each other, and your brain function will be diminished.

Basically: use it or lose it.

Luckily, there’s no need to enroll in a calculus class to keep your noggin in tip-top shape. Here’s five fun ways to keep your brain fit, from crosswords to escape games.

1. Crossword Puzzles

Crossword puzzles have long been held up as being great for keeping your brain active. More than testing your knowledge of obscure facts, it’s learning new words, storing them in your memory, and retrieving them for the next crossword that helps build memory muscle.

2. Knitting

Seems like you’re not doing a lot with your brain when you’re knitting, but that’s exactly the point. Knitting functions similarly to meditation, helping to regulate your moods and protect against brain aging.

3. Escape Games

The best way to exercise your brain is to use all your senses at once in unusual ways. And the best way to do this is to play an escape game: a new environment, visual clues, audio cues, mini challenges, teamwork—it’s all there.

4. Geocaching

Believe it or not, an important way to keep your brain sharp is to do physical activity. Another excellent exercise is to break routine and “do things the hard way.” By putting you into a forest, sending you on a treasure hunt, and taking away Google Maps, Geocaching combines all these things.

5. Virtuosity

Challenge yourself to become the absolute best at something creative, whether that’s a musical instrument, short story writing, boat building, or soccer juggling. Virtuosos are more alert, open-minded, and calm and they can put details together coherently better than other people. Even if you don’t become Yo-Yo Ma, your brain will thank you for trying.

Keeping your brain in fighting condition by booking one of Krakit’s four Vancouver Escape Games.

From Ostomachion to Escape Game: A History of the Puzzle

The Ostomachion Puzzle (Illustration: Rosario Van Tulpe (CC))

Escape games may be a pretty new phenomenon (the first one opened in 2007 in Japan), but coming up with puzzles to solve purely for the fun of it is an ancient human pastime. While it’s hard to know for certain what the very first puzzles were, there are some really old ones entered into the history books.

The world’s first mechanical game

This game from 2550–2250 BCE looks oddly familiar. Many a Christmas cracker and kid’s birthday goody-bag comes stuffed with one of these puzzles, which requires you to lead the ball from one end of the labyrinth to the other. This clay one looks just as hard as the plastic versions we have today.

The world’s first riddle

One of humankind’s oldest riddles unsurprisingly comes from Classical literature. In Sophocles’s play Oedipus Rex from 429 BCE, when Oedipus encounters the wily Sphinx, it asks him this riddle: "What goes on four feet in the morning, two feet at noon, and three feet in the evening?"

Oedipus answers correctly: “Man,” and is spared becoming the Sphinx’s dinner by his own quick thinking.

The world’s first puzzle

The famous mathematician Archimedes is behind this most ancient of puzzles: the Ostomachion Puzzle. Invented in 287–212 BCE, this puzzle has 14 geometric pieces that the player is required to arrange correctly in order to fit into a perfect square.

The world’s first crossword

The crossword is the new kid on the block, for sure. It was invented in 1913 by a journalist named Arthur Wayne, which makes it just over a century old. Crosswords are so commonplace now, it’s hard to imagine they were once an innovative pastime, just like escape rooms!

Take on a variety of puzzles and riddles when you play one of Krakit Vancouver Escape Games four themed escape rooms. Book now.