How to Select Visual Brain Teasers

Visual brain teasers and visual riddles test your ability to recognize patterns in complex images. In order to solve visual brain teasers, you have to be able to notice minute details, employ logic, identify patterns and break codes.

Instructions

Select Visual Brain Teasers

1. Look for brain teasers with complex visual elements. Look for images with high contrast, complex background patterns, and incongruent elements in the overall design.

2. Try your hand at visual puns. Visual puns feature words or phrases in unusual configurations. A classic example would be the word "Mill1on." Look at the numeral in the middle of the word. The answer to the teaser is "one in a million."

3. Look for visual puzzles that employ basic mathematics skills like the ability to manipulate geometric formulas and shapes. Try a tangram, a puzzle which provides you with a geometric shape and requires you to separate it into pieces to create an image.

4. Keep an eye out for visual puzzles that use spatial relations, math equations and logic. Select visual puzzle game cards like the Thinkfun Visual Brainstorms cards.

5. Subscribe to "Games Magazine" for access to original visual puzzles, solution tips, game reviews and tools for creating your own puzzles.

6. Broaden your search by looking online for optical illusions. A typical illusion appears to represent one thing when you first look at it, but seems to turn into another thing when you continue to stare at it. One classic optical illusion features an old woman who appears to turn into a beautiful bar maid right before your eyes.

7. Try a visual puzzle that requires you to spot the difference between two different images. Look for video games in restaurants and arcades that require you to compare two images and circle the areas where differences occur.

8. Mix things up by trying a Droodle puzzle, a combination of the words "doodle" and "riddle." Look for meaning in abstract images and stick figures to enhance the brain function associated with creativity.

Tips & Warnings

• Select a visual teaser book with several different skills levels so you can track your advancing skills.

• Find a game forum and ask other puzzlers for tips on solving visual puzzles.

• Mixing up word and number brain teasers is a great way to boost your brain power, even more so than specializing in only one type of puzzle, such as crosswords or Sudoku puzzles.