Neurocognitive learning specialist Donalee Markus has been creating brain-developing puzzles for over 30 years, helping its clients — including people who have suffered traumatic brain injuries, children with learning difficulties, adults with memory issues due to aging brains and NASA engineers. During that 30-year period, she has made more than 18,000 puzzles and now select few are available to the iOS device owners through the app called Strong Mind Puzzles. Apparently, the exercises chosen make the greatest change in the shortest amount of time.
The application comes with 9 puzzle levels, based on increasingly complex rules and variables. The first level features 25 puzzles with only one variable, which are sorted randomly by color, shape, size, or orientation of the object. You can reset the level as often as you like, and the permutations are random and complex. The game provides 1000’s of different puzzles that should make you “think smarter not harder.” Every level demands that you get 80% correct to move up a level.
As we mentioned, the levels get more complex as you progress, requiring the use of deductive and inductive reasoning, and ambiguity. You get to figure out your own mistakes to apparently learn how your mind works and eventually “improve memory, concentration and problem solving.”
I’m not sure I’m that convinced, but considering Strong Mind Puzzles costs only 2 bucks, I’m willing to try it out.
Strong Mind Puzzles ($1.99) [iTunes link]