Retaining a strong memory is essential to a person's overall well-being. One of the best ways to improve memory is playing fun games. Whether it's a board game or a deck of cards, putting your brain to work definitely has its advantages.
Here are 10 games you can play to boost your memory:
1. Chess. A study of 4,000 Venezuelan students showed significant rises in the IQ scores of both boys and girls after four months of instruction in the board game of chess,
according to Chess.com. A recent study featured in The New England Journal of Medicine found that people over 75 who engage in brain-stretching activities like chess are less likely to develop dementia than their peers who don't play board games.
SPECIAL: Longevity in a Glass: Daily Drink Can Reverse Memory Loss
2. Hearts is a four-player card game in which the object is to have the least number of points when the game ends. Card games like Hearts train attention span, concentration, memory and logical reasoning.
3. Solitaire is a one-person card game in which the player seeks to unsort the mixed playing cards and stack them into four separate piles by suit, with the player winning if he or she successfully sorts all the cards. Solitaire trains concentration and visual memory.
4. Trivial Pursuit is a board game in which you win by correctly answering a question from each of the six Trivial Pursuit categories. The game trains memory skills and quick thinking ability.
5. Hangman is a word game puzzle in which you're given a limited number of guesses to figure out a hidden word. Word games like Hangman train important brain skills that include memory, verbal fluency and information processing.
6. Scrabble is a word game in which two to four players score points by placing tiles, each bearing a single letter, onto a game board that is divided into a 15-by-15 grid of squares. Scrabble helps players sharpen their vocabulary and memory skills.
ALERT: These 7 Things Activate Alzheimer’s In Your Brain
7. Go Fish is a card game in which each player tries to accumulate the most "books" consisting of all four cards of one rank. Winning at Go Fish takes luck, a decent memory and a good sense of timing.
8. Uno, which means "one" in Spanish, is a classic card game in which the object is to get rid of all your cards before the other players get rid of theirs. Players must remember to call out "Uno" when they get down to one card in their hand, otherwise they'll be required to draw two more cards from the pile.
9. Sudoku is a puzzle game in which the player seeks to find the numbers missing from a 9-by-9 grid while following a few simple rules. Math puzzles like Sudoku train important brain skills that include arithmetic, logical reasoning and quantitative reasoning.
10. Concentration, also known as Memory, is a card game in which all cards are laid face down on a surface and two cards are flipped face up over each turn. The object of the game is to turn over pairs of matching cards.
This article is for information only and is not intended as medical advice. Talk with your doctor about your specific health and medical needs.
SPECIAL: Nursing Home Nightmare, 3 Ways to Live In Your Home Forever
© 2025 Newsmax. All rights reserved.