Back in April, The New York Times Magazine devoted a full issue to brain science, including an article on gaming with the provocative title, Can You Build a Better Brain? (It's called Can You Make Yourself Smarter? online). The article pointed to a 2008 study that suggested playing a memory-building game regularly can increase fluid intelligence, or working memory, and even raise your IQ.

Even as some scientists voice concerns about these results, parents, educators, corporate self-improvement gurus, and even individuals are very excited about them. Since the study's initial release, researchers have replicated the findings with preschoolers, college students, and the elderly; Internet-based brain-training game companies have opened their doors for business; school districts have assigned students to hours of computer-lab brain building time; and teens have confronted their parents with articles from scientific journals, insisting that playing hours of shoot ‘em up video games may actually improve their chances of getting into a good college.

Here at Vocabulary.com, we have always believed that playing games that exercise your brain muscles is a good idea. Of course, in creating The Vocabulary.com Challenge, we didn’t set out to build a game that raises your IQ score. We set out simply to teach vocabulary in a way that was 1) fun, 2) smart, and 3) fast.

But when we compare the Challenge to the brain-building games flooding the market, we notice some similarities: 

  • As with brain building games, the Challenge helps you develop concentration. The game doesn’t waste your time with words you already know, and this keeps you on your toes.
  • The Challenge trains your brain to be flexible. Switching among words and question types builds this kind of precision.
  • The Challenge actively expands your working memory, by planning the frequency and timing of the questions you see on a given word in a way that maximizes what we know about your brain's capacity to absorb and retain informaiton.  (Read more about that here.)

So what do you think? Do you find yourself feeling sharper as you play the Challenge? Does that feeling of sharpness translate into other areas of your mental life? Let us know by leaving a comment below.

Or just keep playing: Your next question awaits.