Wordle, an online brain puzzle, blew up a few years ago. It is not tremendously complicated and appeals to people of many ages. To play you input a five-letter word. From there, each letter will turn green, yellow, or gray. If a letter is green it is in the correct spot, but if a letter turns yellow it is in the incorrect spot. If a letter is gray it is not in the word at all. You work through this until eventually all letters are green or you run out of turns. Despite its simplicity, it can advance people’s vocabulary by exposing them to words like “tacit” and “trove.”
Wordle was eventually picked up by the New York Times who hoped to expand their platform of brain puzzles. They offer various other games including Connections and Spelling Bee. Similar to Wordle, Spelling Bee forces people to think of various words under a set of rules. Connections, on the other hand, make people think of what connects four different words into four different groups. Unlike many phone-accessible games, New York Times games actively increase intelligence.
There are many different theories of intelligence. According to a theory by Howard Gardener, there are eight types of intelligence currently known: linguistic (language), logical, musical, spatial, bodily-kinesthetic, interpersonal, intrapersonal, and naturalist. Along with these types of intelligence, he asserts that people are not born with the full extent of their intelligence. It can be worked at and grown. Brain games like Wordle, Connections, and Spelling Bee increase people’s linguistic abilities as well as the logical abilities that come from puzzle solving.
In my opinion, brain games are one of the easiest ways to increase intelligence. It forces people to logically think through things. It takes not even five minutes to work through these and breaks the pattern of mindless scrolling. There are even options to send messages of your wins to friends and family and can be a fun routine to see who does best on that day’s puzzle. I regularly play these games and when I don’t know the winning word or words, I look them up. I have expanded my vocabulary and in turn parts of my intelligence by consistently playing these games. I think, like me, all people can benefit from these games, and I think they’d have fun doing it.
