THE BEST APPS & SOFTWARE TO KEEP YOUR BRAIN FIT
BRAIN TRAINING TOOLS
Brainhq ( www.brainhq.com) makes a lot of bold claims on its website about how “unlike other brain-training programs, Brainhq is proven to work”. Look beyond these essentially meaningless assertions, though, and you’ll find a decent selection of 29 brain-training exercises that automatically adapt to your skill level, along with a useful set of tools for measuring your performance and comparing scores with others.
Games range from reaction tests like Hawk Eye (which left Simon Brew all a flutter – see page 74), where you have to quickly click a bird in a flock that’s different from the others, to visual memory tests, like Mind’s Eye, where you’re asked to remember an image, then work out whether it’s contained in a set of similar images.
Brainhq can be played online on your PC, or on a phone or tablet via Android and IOS apps. You can play the first levels of selected Brainhq exercises for free – simply sign up for an account to do that. But for full access to the program’s exercises and features, you’ll need to pay a subscription. Brainhq currently costs £9 a month, or £66 a year.
Cognifit
One of the more advanced brain-training programs available, Cognifit ( www.
cognifit.com) can be used to measure and train a wide range of cognitive skills, including contextual memory (remembering circumstances surrounding an event), hand-eye coordination, and visual perception. It’s also one of the more expensive options, with a subscription of £13.15 per month (or £118.80 per year).
Sign up for free and you can work your way through a series of exercises – including reaction tests and mazes – to evaluate various cognitive functions. At the end you’ll be presented with a score out of 800 and a dashboard detailing your strengths and weaknesses (Simon Brew got a mere 289 – can you do better?). Beyond this, however, you’ll need to pay if you want to enrol in the service’s personal mentalhealth program and view the full details of your assessment.
The games on offer are entertaining – sudoku and mahjong are included, alongside word games, maths challenges, puzzles and more (see screenshot below for the full range). They can be played on a PC, phone or tablet.
Elevate
Elevate doesn’t make any grand claims about preventing dementia or making you cleverer. Instead it focuses on improving everyday cognitive and communication skills – such as writing, listening, speaking, reading and maths – across more than 40 games and exercises.
After your initial assessment, you’ll be given an Elevate Proficiency Quotient (EPQ) score in each category. The games themselves are nicely designed and feel more practical than those offered by the other apps here. For example, you might be trained to express yourself clearly and concisely in a writing game by tapping unnecessary words.
Elevate is free, but it’s not availabe for PCS, only IOS ( www.snipca.com/27480) and Android ( www.snipca.com/27481) devices. Paying for the Pro version of the app (£3.99 per month or £38.99 per year) provides access to more daily training sessions, as well as 17 extra games and regular updates with additional content.
Peak
Peak takes a more motivational approach. It aims to be your ‘personal coach’, challenging and improving your focus, language, memory, problem solving, mental agility and more. Games include word searches, number puzzles, sorting exercises (such as piles of origami – see screenshot above right) and navigating mazes. The games are colourful, well designed and – for the most part – pleasantly engaging.
Peak has a great free version, but there’s also a Pro edition offering personalised workouts, unlimited access to all games, and in-depth assessments of your abilities and performance. Subscription to the Pro version costs £3.99 per month or £25.99 per year. Like Elevate, it’s available only for phones and tablets (Android: www.snipca.com/ 27482; IOS: www.snipca.com/27480).
Lumosity
As mentioned on page 52, Lumosity ( www.lumosity.com) has been fined for false advertising, so feel free to take all the ‘scientific’ claims on its home page with a healthy pinch of salt. That said, the program offers a compelling package of mental workouts and brain-testing games, whether you play online on your PC, or via the free Android and IOS apps.
Games are categorised by Speed, Memory, Attention, Flexibility, Problem Solving, Language and Math (maths to you and me). Most are fun to play – such as guiding different coloured trains to their correct destination by switching the rails – and are well designed.
Free access is strictly limited to three games a day, however. If you subscribe, you’ll unlock access to all 50 of the program’s games, as well as additional features, such as seeing how you compare with other Lumosity members. Lumosity offers monthly (£7.95), yearly (£39.96), two-yearly (£60) and lifetime (£219.95) payment plans.
BEST MEMORY BOOSTERS Eidetic
This ios-only app ( www.snipca.com/27491) works differently to the memory-boosting parts of most other brain-training tools by testing your recall of things that are important to you in the real world – phone numbers, bank account details, passwords – rather than random items in a game. Cleverly, you can choose phone numbers from your device’s contacts (ie, friends and family).
Eidetic (which takes its name from the term used to describe photographic memory) shows you virtual flashcards at progressively increased intervals. Tap the + button to schedule a test, then select the type of item you want and the level of intensity: casual, normal or cram. Eidetic is free, but you can play only one memory test at a time unless you pay to upgrade to the Pro version (£4.99).
Quizlet Flashcards
This website ( https://quizlet.com) and accompanying free IOS and Android app lets you create your own virtual flashcards and test yourself on any subject. It’s intended as a study aid for students, but it can be used as an effective way to help anybody memorise anything they like. You can also search for and test yourself on flashcards created by other users (see screenshot below).
Rules!
Another iphone and ipad app (£2.99 from www.snipca.com/27492), Rules! is a challenging memory test disguised as a cute-looking puzzle game. It presents you with a series of timed tests, based on a series of rules. The rules start simple – tap a series of numbered cards in descending order, for example – but with each level, a new rule is added and you have to remember all the previous ones too, which gets increasingly demanding.
Brain Games
This website hosts a selection of free Flash games aimed at stimulating mental activity, including 25 titles that are dedicated to improving memory ( www.snipca.com/27493). Not all the games offered are great, but some – including a virtual recreation of the 1980s electronic game Simon and classic matching-pair games – are fun to play in short bursts. Just try not to get too annoyed by the adverts.
BEST BRAIN WORKOUT GAMES Words with Friends 2
If you like Scrabble, you’re sure to love Words with Friends (see screenshot right), which lets you play similar word games with friends and family over the internet. The game recently received a massive update that added new modes, including the exhilarating lightning round in which two teams try to reach a points total as quickly as possible. Words with Friends 2 is free to download for Android ( www.snipca.com/27498) and Apple ( www.snipca.com/27499), though in-app purchases will remove adverts and unlock new options.
Roll the Ball
This simple but addictive logic game is free for Android ( www.snipca.com/27500) and IOS ( www.snipca.com/27501), though you can pay £2 to get rid of the ads. The basic idea is to slide panels to connect squares on a grid in as few moves as possible, so that you can roll the ball to the goal. There’s no time limit to contend with, making Roll the Ball one of the more relaxing brain games to play, and the retro-wooden design is pleasingly old-fashioned.
Sudoku and crosswords
You don’t need to keep buying puzzle books to play Sudoku. The internet is full of free Sudoku sites, the best of which are www.websudoku.com and www.sudoku.com. If you want to take your brain teasers with you wherever you go, then Sudoku: Andoku 3 Free for Android devices ( www.snipca.com/27494) and Sudoku :) for IOS ( www.snipca.com/27495) are among the best free apps.
As with Sudoku, you’ll find masses of free crossword puzzles online. Many of the UK’S national newspapers publish their daily crossword online for free, for instance, including the Financial Times ( www.ft.com/crossword) and the Guardian ( www.theguardian.com/ crosswords). Among the numerous other sites dedicated to crosswords is Boatload Puzzles ( www.snipca.com/27496), which hosts more than 40,000 puzzles. Similarly, there are dozens of mobile crossword apps to choose from, including many free ones, such as the highly rated Crossword Puzzle Free ( www.snipca.com/27497) for Android.
Chess
Microsoft might have killed off the Chess Titans game that came free with Windows 7, but there are plenty of alternatives. In the free Chess Online app for Windows 10 ( www.snipca.com/27502) you can play against both human and computerised opponents, while Chess Friends ( www.chessfriends.com) lets you watch live matches as well as challenge other players. Most features are available for free, but paying £6 a month adds extras, such as in-depth analysis and training videos.
Threes! Free
Number slider puzzles have been a big hit on mobile devices recently, and Threes! Free is the free version of the popular original. It’s best played with touch controls on Android ( www. snipca.com/27505) or IOS ( www.snipca.com/27506), but you can also play an online version of it on your PC ( http://play.threesgame.com). It’s an incredibly simple idea – just slide tiles of matching numbers on to each other in multiples of three – but it’s instantly absorbing and quickly gets challenging.
Sea Hero Quest
Developed by Alzheimer’s Research UK, in conjunction with Deutsche Telekom and scientists from University College London and the University of East Anglia, Sea Hero Quest (free from www.snipca.com/27511 for Android, www.snipca. com/27512 for IOS, or online at www.seaheroquest.com) is both a game and a valuable research tool.
You test your spatial navigational skills – the cognitive functions that are often first to deteriorate in dementia – by sailing a boat through different courses (see screenshot above). As you play, the game collects anonymised data about your spatial navigational performance, which it is hoped will help research into diagnosing the condition earlier. “Every two minutes of game play is equivalent to five hours of lab-based research,” Alzheimer’s Research UK told us.