Fun apps to improve logic, spacial reasoning, and concentration skills
These days, logic games aren’t all crosswords and pairs matching, especially not on mobile devices. Dozens of challenging and engaging puzzles, games, and brain teasers are available, and a surprising number are free—either fully or via trial versions.
The website APPitic.com, an app resource site with more than 6,000 apps in more than 300 subcategories, offers a number of apps pertaining to logic and gaming. Here, we’ve gathered a handful of those apps, and you can access more on the APPitic site.
[Editor’s note: eSchool News has selected these apps—originally curated by Apple Distinguished Educators via APPitic—that may help you meet your instructional needs.]
1. NumberOne Brain
Game that challenges players to find a given number in a different color as quickly as they can, with time bonuses and loses for correct/incorrect answers. According to the developers, the number/color contrast stimulates both sides of the brain.
2. Tangram XL
Simple version of the popular Tangram puzzles designed with kids in mind. It is designed to avoid unnecessary decoration to keep kids’ attention on geometric concepts.
Next page: Puzzles, chess, and physics games
3. Animal Sudoku
This twist on the classic Sudoku puzzles assigns an animal to each number, ramping up the concentration required to solve each puzzle.
4. Chess With Friends
Multiplayer chess game lets users play against each other or find random opponents. However, it requires a Facebook or Games With Friends login.
5. FairPairHD
Matching game that challenges players to find the associative link (such as rain and an umbrella), and then remember those links going forward as they solve boards with increasing complexity.
6. Finger Physics
Fit together different and moving shapes to solve puzzles. The free version features around 100 levels with various objectives and difficulty levels.
7. Flow Free
Connect matching colors with pipe to create a flow. Pair all colors, and cover the entire board to solve each puzzle. But watch out, pipes will break if they cross or overlap.
8. Genius Brain
Using clues, players must identify in which column a given icon is located on a large board in this version of Einstein’s puzzle. It is aimed at improving your visual memory, ordering your thinking, helping form cause-effect relations, and more.
9. Monorail
Draw lines to connect “stations” and create a working monorail system in this game that challenges visual/spacial/geometric skills. According to the developers, Kindergartners can solve the beginner levels. Mathematicians from MIT have struggled to solve the most difficult ones.
10. iDetective
Players help solve real detective cases using gathered clues, their own logic skills, and a list of suspects. The free version features four different solvable cases.
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