TanZen

Twitch, shoot-em-up, violent games are not good for you, in my opinion, at any age. Quiet, serene, beautiful games that make you think and conceptualize in different ways are always good. TanZen is one such game. If I were still teaching math, I would incorporate it into my curriculum. There is no need to have an iDevice: anyone can make the shapes out of cardboard. TanZen is another game, like Unblock Me, that are good for spatial reasoning: NB, those who may know someone trying to get into dental school.

Games for the Brain

Another site with some good stuff for the brain. Try "Mastermind" on it: http://www.gamesforthebrain.com/game/mastermind/. It might spark a taste for art history, as well as your memory.

Bicycling

Well, you really need to do something, don't you? And you may have tried running, and it may not have not agreed with your weight/knees. The scenery goes by much faster when you are cycling. Multiplied blood flow should help your brain. Wear a helmet and be sensible.

Concentration

What was I talking about? Oh...yes. I used to play versions of this memory matching game with my daughter, now pursuing a PhD in chemistry. There is probably a huge number of varieties available; I kind of like Moosentration, which provides many options and trash talks you, too.

Master Mind

A hundred years ago, I taught middle school. The difficulties were probably no different than they are today: attention span, peer pressure, etc. I used a variety of games to promote attention and learning. One of them, 3d tic tac toe, seems a bit simple-minded today. Another, backgammon, is a game with so many "states" that it is a triumph of artificial intelligence that it has been modeled. Master Mind in its simplest form is a board game with colorful plastic pegs. That game required an opponent who set the hidden code. It is a trivial task for a computer program to be your opponent. This incarnation is a fairly hefty $5 for an iDevice, but it has quite an elegant user interface. You have options to choose any number between 3 colors (fairly trivial) and 8 colors (it may make you tear your hair out.) The game tracks your history and gives you a rating.

Arts & Letters Daily

You may be turned off by even the Washington Post and New York Times recounts of quotidian events (they may not be to blame, based on the inane stuff they have to cover.) Aldaily.com is a compendium of what remains of the life of the mind, such as it is, in such places as newyorker.com and nybooks.com, with really good synopses to help you to know what to click.

Unblock Me

It is a little late to be telling you this, but you may have heard anyway that Stanford is offering a class on artificial intelligence free on the web to tens of thousands, including me. It is being conducted in a very rigorous, detailed way. One thing I find interesting about it is that it addresses sliding block problems, which date back to the plastic things you fooled around with as a child, trying to get the blocks to go from 1 to 15 in order. Unblock Me will make you smarter, forcing you to start with your end in mind, in a highly visual way. Available on iDevices; I don't know about elsewhere. A lot of challenge for free.

Have to start somewhere: Kenken

I have in the last decade tutored college grads, or those soon to be, who were preparing for the GMAT, the test to get into graduate business programs. These people, many of whom had gone to fairly prestigious schools as undergrads, were often unable to factor numbers, multiply single digits in their heads, or reduce fractions without moving their lips and staring off into space. Kenken is quite an entrancing game that can strengthen all those skills, and logic as well. It is available daily in the New York Times online (but you will have to limit your visits to 20 a month or pay a subscription), kenken.com for free (recommended), and there is a decent app for iDevices (fairly inexpensive.)

Here we go

You may be of a certain age, and you find that your mental chops are not what they once were. You forget things, misplace things, pause...interminably...in the middle of a sentence. Or you may have children, or grandchildren, who are not even as sharp as you are. You find that you, and they, have less and less ability to focus on even the most simple-minded subjects. This blog will be a work in progress, and will focus on things that can make you sharper--print, games, media, even...TV. You do not have to go gentle into that good night.