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.

5 Unassuming and Underestimated Detectives

Nancy Drew, doing some unassuming sleuthing in one her many books

If you’re a criminal and you’ve got a Sherlock Holmes, Stella Gibson, or John Luther on your case, you’ve got no choice but to immediately start quaking in your boots. But it’s not just intimidating and decorated detectives who always get their man. There are some sleuths who the bad guys never see coming, including the seven underestimated crime-solvers on our list.

Don’t forget: you can try your own unassuming detective hat on at Krakit Vancouver Escape Game and catch your friends off guard with your sleuthing brilliance.

1. Miss Marple

The simple fact is: no one suspects the little old lady—of anything, least of all of being a shrewd investigative mind. That’s probably why people are willing to say things in front of Miss Marple they’d never say in front of Sherlock, helping her to catch them out.

2. Nancy Drew

If no one suspects the little old lady, they certainly don’t suspect the teenage girl, precocious though she may be. Hardworking and determined, Nancy Drew never fails to far exceed people’s expectations of her.

3. Poirot

Tiny, fashion forward, and with a slight limp, Poirot cuts a far different figure than the towering dominance of John Luther. However, his unassuming physical appearance lures people into talking to his “benign confessor” character.

4. Jessica Fletcher

Novelist on the outside, brilliant detective on the inside, Jessica Fletcher of Murder She Wrote is able to use her day job as a mystery writer to gain insight into real-life crimes—always to the criminals’ downfall.

5. Dirk Gently

People might expect Dirk Gently—a man obsessed with the spirit world and otherworldly pursuits—to be full of a lot of hooey. But though Gently may seem like he’s running a sham business with his “holistic detective agency,” he’s not messing about in the slightest. Gently is the real deal.

Get sleuthing at one of Krakit's four Vancouver escape rooms by booking you and up to seven other people into one of four themed escape games.

Escape This: 6 Zombie Apocalypse Survival Skills That Apply to Real Life

When it comes to surviving the end times, we normally think of things like machete-wielding skills or the ability to hotwire a semi-truck. But it’s not just practical skills you’ll need out there. Humans’ main advantage in the natural world is our big brains, and that’s what’ll get you through the zombie apocalypse in one piece. (Maybe that’s why the undead want to eat them so bad …). 

Not coincidentally, they’re also the same sorts of skills you’ll use to lead yourself to victory in Krakit’s Zombie Apocalypse escape room.

1. Ingenuity

Rather than stocking up on tinned foods and honing your knife skills, you know what’s really going to help you in the Zombie Apocalypse? Being creative and insightful. If you don’t know how to jerry-rig a tank, then at least your ability for inventive thinking will help you think up a plan and help you learn new skills along the way.

2. Flexibility

Along with ingenuity, flexible thinking is key. You can only use what you have at hand. How are you going to MacGyver your way out of this situation? Unfortunately, your original plan has gone out the window—better think of something else quick. When one thing doesn’t work, immediately switching to a new gear will help you get through the Zombie Apocalypse, escape games, and life in general.

3. Quick thinking

When you’re living on the run, often you don’t have a lot of time to come up with the perfect plan. Developing quick thinking by challenging yourself with rapid-fire puzzles and logic problems is a surefire way to make sure you stay one step ahead of the undead and also your coworkers.

4. Long-term thinking

At the same time as quick thinking is an essential skill, so is long-term thinking. Being able to do both means you’ll be able to escape immediate danger but also figure out how you’re going to secure safety for you and your crew in the long run. In an escape room, this comes into play when you solve the smaller puzzles that lead to the bigger victory—winning the entire escape game.

5. Reading people

If you want to survive in the cut-throat world of the Zombie Apocalypse, you’ll have to keep a close eye on the people you’re with. As much as we want to trust everyone, you must stay vigilant. Being able to read people accurately is key to figuring out if what they’re saying matches what they’re thinking. This skill applies everywhere, from zombie survival to the dating scene to the workplace.

6. Teamwork

Though you need to stay on your toes, you wouldn’t survive any sort of apocalypse without the help of your friends or even strangers. Learning how to meld your strengths with someone else’s is the only way to forge ahead, when it comes to zombies and when it comes to life.

Band together with a group of up to seven of your friends to defeat Krakit’s horde of zombies in our Zombie Apocalypse escape room. Book now.

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.