Brain Health is a unique series focused on how to help you age well. These stories have been created in cooperation with AARP and Word In Black.
If you’ve ever flipped through the pages of a dictionary, you’ve seen the thousands of words at the core of daily human expression. Lexicographers estimate the English language alone contains more than a million words, a perfect foundation for games and puzzles.
Therefore, it should not come as a surprise that experts say playing with words — in games and puzzles, alone or with friends — is a great way to support a healthy and active mind, according to AARP’s Global Council on Brain Health (GCBH).
Played alone, experts say, word games prompt reading and creativity, helping slow or prevent declines in cognitive health. Played in a group, word games encourage camaraderie, build trust, and help form social connections, one of the six pillars of brain health.
“The more that we’re intellectually engaged, socially engaged, physically engaged, the healthier our brain is,” says Dr. Yaakov Stern, professor of neuropsychology at Columbia University. “Mental engagement, cognitive engagement doesn’t have to be sitting in front of the computer and doing some kind of a training task. It could be fun.”
Research shows the brain is capable of retaining a wide range of words, around 20,000 to 30,000 on average over a lifetime. As our brains age, however, retrieving the right words in such a vast vocabulary becomes more of a challenge, like finding a specific piece of paper in an overstuffed file cabinet.
Those changes can result in a common but frustrating occurrence scientifically known as a “tip of the tongue,” or TOT state: an inability to grasp a word that seems so close and familiar yet so far away in your brain. It’s common even in healthy seniors.
That’s where word games come in. Stern and other experts say activities that require recalling words or letter sequences, like Wordle, help exercise your working memory. Games that incorporate reading or word definitions, such as a newspaper crossword puzzle or hidden-word game, help the brain exercise its visuospatial skills.
Healthy-brain word games run the gamut, from Scrabble to TV game shows to the generic crossword puzzles near the checkout counter at the grocery store.
While regularly playing just about any word-related brain teasers can help, Stern recommends taking on activities that are slightly challenging.
For example, if you are used to doing word games alone, it might be beneficial to join a puzzle club. This will introduce you to new perspectives from other people and different abilities to process information as well as a chance to socialize, an important pillar of brain health.
If you are used to being in groups, on the other hand, then it could be helpful to explore solo word games to test your mental acuity without any help. (Think word searches and other puzzles that might even include numbers, symbols, and sounds.)
“The truth is that the more we do something, the better we get at it,” says Stern. “So people who learn to do calculations a lot learn how to do it in a more rapid way; they don’t have to think about it as hard.”
But if imaginative challenges are your thing, then you might even consider creating a game. There are several resources online to generate Word Searches and crossword puzzles for the purpose of learning and entertainment.
Find more information from AARP about brain health, click here.