Word Games and Brain Health: What Research Shows

Word games have real but modest evidence behind them, and the strongest finding is more interesting than the usual claims. In a randomised trial, crossword puzzles outperformed purpose-built computerised brain training games for memory in older adults with mild cognitive impairment. Not matched. Beat. And separately, a survey of more than three thousand older adults found word game participation was one of the leisure activities most clearly linked to better cognitive scores.

But there's a catch in each of those studies that most coverage skips, and it changes what you should take from them. Here's what the evidence supports, and what it doesn't.

What does the research actually show?

Two pieces of evidence carry most of the weight here, and they are useful precisely because they have opposite strengths and weaknesses.

The first is a large survey. Tyran Terada and Yeonjung Lee, publishing in Innovation in Aging in 2021, analysed 3,271 adults aged 65 and over from the Health and Retirement Study. Participation in word games showed a significantly positive association with cognitive functioning, with a beta coefficient of .117 at p below .01. Their model explained 31 percent of the variance in cognitive scores after controlling for demographic and socioeconomic factors.

That is a big sample and a clear signal. It is also cross-sectional, meaning everything was measured at one point in time. The authors are explicit that this cannot establish causation. Word games might sharpen cognition, or people with sharper cognition might simply enjoy word games more, or something else entirely might drive both. The study cannot tell you which.

The second piece is a proper randomised trial, and it is the one worth knowing about.

Why did crosswords beat computer brain games?

Because someone finally ran the comparison, and the result went the opposite way to what the brain training industry would predict.

D.P. Devanand at Columbia and Murali Doraiswamy at Duke ran a 78-week, two-site, single-blinded trial published in NEJM Evidence and funded by the National Institute on Aging. They randomised 107 people with mild cognitive impairment, mean age 71.2, into two groups. One got 12 weeks of intensive home-based training on web-based cognitive games. The other got web-based crossword puzzles. Both then had six booster sessions.

Crosswords won on the primary outcome. On the ADAS-Cog scale, where a higher score means worse impairment, the crossword group improved from 9.59 to 8.61 while the games group got worse, drifting from 9.53 to 9.93. The adjusted difference at week 78 was 1.44 points in favour of crosswords, with a confidence interval of 2.83 to 0.06 and a p value of 0.04.

Two further results are worth knowing. Crosswords also came out ahead on the Functional Activities Questionnaire, which tracks everyday functioning rather than test scores, by 1.08 points. And on brain imaging, decreases in hippocampal volume and cortical thickness were greater in the games group than the crossword group, which the authors suggest points to a possible neuroprotective effect from the crossword training.

So the humble crossword outperformed software built specifically to train cognition, on memory, on daily function, and on brain structure. That is a genuinely surprising result and it deserves more attention than it gets.

What does that trial not prove?

This is the part that gets left out, and it matters more than the headline.

The authors list their own limitations, and the important one is that there was no control condition without cognitive training. Everyone in the study did something. So the trial shows crosswords beat computerised brain games. It does not show that crosswords beat reading a book, doing the gardening, or sitting quietly. Nobody in that study was doing nothing, so we cannot know how either group compares to a person who simply carried on with their life.

They also flag that participants had an unusually high average level of education, which limits how far the finding generalises. And it is 107 people in one clinical population, adults who already had mild cognitive impairment. Whether the same holds for a healthy forty-year-old is an open question the study was never designed to answer.

Put those two studies side by side and you get the honest picture. The big survey shows association but cannot prove direction. The trial shows causation between two options but had no do-nothing comparison. Neither is weak research. They are just answering narrower questions than the headlines suggest.

The same caution applies to commercial brain training generally. The National Institute on Aging has said there is not enough evidence to suggest commercially available computer-based brain training applications have the same impact as structured trial-based cognitive training. We go through that evidence properly in our guide on whether brain training actually works.

Does getting better at word games make you better at anything else?

Mostly no, and this is the finding that should shape your expectations more than any other.

The crossword trial had no do-nothing group, as covered above. But there is a much larger trial that did, and it is the one that answers the transfer question. ACTIVE, the Advanced Cognitive Training for Independent and Vital Elderly study, enrolled 2,832 adults aged 65 and over and randomised them into three training arms, one each for memory, reasoning and processing speed, plus a no-contact control arm. It is the largest trial of its kind and it ran for two decades.

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, in a comparative effectiveness review published in March 2017, assessed the evidence and put it plainly. Cognitive training improved performance in the domain that was trained. But transfer to other domains, in the review's own words, was rare.

The review also graded how much confidence to place in the results over time: moderate strength of evidence at two years, dropping to low strength at five and ten years. Processing speed training was associated with better everyday functioning, but that finding was also rated low strength because so many participants dropped out along the way that the numbers get hard to trust.

Applied to word games, that means something specific. Do crosswords regularly and you will get better at crosswords. Your retrieval for the kind of clue crosswords use will sharpen, and that is real. What you should not expect is for it to make you better at remembering where you parked, following a complicated recipe, or keeping track of a conversation in a noisy room. Those are different abilities, and the evidence that training one moves the others is weak.

This is not a reason to stop playing. It is a reason to play because you enjoy it, and to treat any wider benefit as a bonus you cannot count on.

Which brain skills do word games actually train?

Different word games work different things, and the differences are bigger than people assume.

• Crosswords lean on retrieval and general knowledge. You are searching memory for a word that fits a definition and a letter pattern at once, which is a genuine dual constraint.
• Anagram and scramble games train working memory and mental manipulation. You hold letters in mind and rearrange them without writing anything down, which is closer to a pure working memory task than a vocabulary one.
• Word searches mostly train visual scanning and sustained attention. There is very little vocabulary work happening, because the word is already given to you.
• Daily guessing games combine deduction with vocabulary retrieval, and the fixed daily format does something the others do not: it builds a habit.

If you want to understand the memory system doing most of the lifting in the middle two, our guide to working memory covers what it is and why it fills up so fast.

Do word games help because of vocabulary or something else?

Probably not mainly vocabulary, and this is the most useful thing to understand about the whole category.

Psychologists separate crystallised ability, meaning the knowledge you have accumulated, from fluid ability, meaning your capacity to reason and process new information. Vocabulary is the classic example of crystallised ability. It is also the ability that holds up best with age, often improving into your sixties and seventies while processing speed and working memory decline.

Which creates an awkward question. If word games mostly exercise the one ability that was already ageing well, why would they help?

The likely answer is that the vocabulary is the wrapper rather than the mechanism. What a crossword actually demands is sustained attention across a long session, working memory to hold partial answers, flexible switching between clues when you get stuck, and retrieval under constraint. Those are fluid abilities wearing a vocabulary costume. That would also explain why crosswords beat the computerised games in the trial: a crossword keeps you engaged for thirty minutes of genuine effort, while a brain training app often gives you sixty seconds of a narrow drill and a congratulatory noise.

How should you play to get any benefit?

Four things, and only one of them is about which game you choose.

Play at the edge of your ability. This is the whole game. A puzzle you finish comfortably is entertainment, which is fine but is not training. If you are getting through it without pausing, move up a difficulty level. Struggle is the active ingredient.

Go for consistency over intensity. Ten to fifteen minutes most days beats an hour on Sunday. The crossword trial ran intensive training for 12 weeks with boosters afterwards, so sustained practice over months is what the evidence actually tested.

Rotate what you play. Getting better at one puzzle format mostly makes you better at that format. Mixing crosswords with anagrams and a daily guessing game covers more ground than drilling one thing.

Keep the basics in place. Sleep, aerobic exercise, blood pressure control and social contact all have stronger evidence behind them than any puzzle. Word games sit on top of those, not instead of them.

If you want somewhere to start, our free word games include a daily word guess that works well as an anchor habit, plus word scramble for the working memory side and word search when you want something lower effort. All free, no signup.

And if you would rather see the wider picture across puzzle types, our guide to the benefits of puzzle games covers the non-verbal side.

What else do people ask about word games and the brain?

Do word games actually improve your brain?

They reliably improve the skills you practise, and one randomised trial found crosswords outperformed computerised brain games in people with mild cognitive impairment. But that trial had no do-nothing group, so it shows crosswords beat one alternative rather than proving they beat doing nothing at all. Treat word games as a good habit with genuine but modest evidence behind them.

Are crosswords better than brain training apps?

In one 78-week trial of 107 people with mild cognitive impairment, yes. Crossword training beat computerised cognitive games on the primary memory measure by 1.44 points on the ADAS-Cog scale, and the games group showed greater shrinkage in hippocampal volume. That is one trial in one population, not a settled verdict, but it does undercut the idea that a purpose-built app automatically beats an old-fashioned puzzle.

Does doing word games prevent dementia?

No, and nobody has shown that. The studies point to better cognitive scores and slower decline in specific groups, not prevention. Sleep, regular aerobic exercise, blood pressure control and social contact all have stronger evidence than any puzzle does. Word games are a reasonable addition to those, not a substitute for them.

How often should you play word games?

Ten to fifteen minutes most days beats a long session once a week. The crossword trial ran intensive home training for 12 weeks followed by booster sessions, so consistency over months is what the evidence actually tested. Pick a game you enjoy enough to keep returning to, because an abandoned routine produces nothing regardless of what the research says.

Which word game is best for your brain?

The one that stays slightly too hard for you. Crosswords have the most direct trial evidence behind them. Word searches train visual scanning more than vocabulary, and anagram games work retrieval speed. Whichever you pick, step the difficulty up once it starts feeling automatic, because comfort is the point at which the training stops.

For general information and self-reflection only. Not medical advice. If you are worried about changes in your memory or thinking, speak to a doctor.

Sources: Devanand D.P., Goldberg T.E., Qian M. et al., Computerized Games versus Crosswords Training in Mild Cognitive Impairment, NEJM Evidence, 2022, 107 participants, funded by the National Institute on Aging. Terada T. and Lee Y., The Association Between Leisure Games and Cognitive Functioning Among Older Adults, Innovation in Aging, 2021, 3,271 adults aged 65 and over from the Health and Retirement Study. National Institute on Aging guidance on cognitive health and commercially available brain training applications.