Sudoku is a popular puzzle game that has been said to be a good mind game because it challenges your logical reasoning skills and your ability to problem-solve. Sudoku can be a fun way to pass the time, but it can also be challenging and frustrating if you don’t have the patience for it.
In this blog post, you’ll learn why Sudoku is a good mind game and what cognitive thinking skills you’ll strengthen from playing.
Is Sudoku a good mind game?
Sudoku is a logic-based number puzzle game. To complete this puzzle, you need to think of ways to match all numbers without having to repeat them in their corresponding spots. Tickling your mind for a bit is the key to completing this puzzle.
A good mind game involves you thinking of possible ways to solve it.
Which strengthens your reasoning and problem-solving skill on why you have chosen such a move.
Sudoku is an example of a good mind game because it can push you to think carefully so as not to make a mess of your prior answers.
At a first glance, you might think that Sudoku is just an easy peasy “child” game that any person can finish.
Well, the second part is true. Any person can play Sudoku if they want to. You can check my article about “Who can play Sudoku and know if you’re one who can” to find out.
But the first part about it being an “easy peasy game”, well based on my own experience, it’s not.
You see, there are different levels of Sudoku puzzles you can find over the internet.
It can be easy, moderate, or hard.
Regardless of its level of difficulty, soft skills like patience, endurance, and persistence are needed for you to complete it properly.
Also, you need to spare some time if you want to have a clear success in doing so.
So, I can confidently say that it’s a good mind game.
What is a mind game?
Games that can only be played using the player’s intellect are called mind games.
Mind games can be defined into two parts: the psychological game or the literal game.
Psychological mind games are commonly associated with human interactions and relations.
Playing hard to get and having unpredictable hot and cold treatment in dating is a psychological mind game.
There are other forms of psychological mind games out there but that topic is beyond the scope of this article.
On the other hand, literal mind games are the ones that use your critical thinking skills to complete a task.
Video games and puzzles like Sudoku is a mind game that uses the player’s thinking skill to pass a certain level by solving them.
These types of mind games can stimulate your brain to find the right answer or strategy you need in order for you to win.
How does a mind game affect your cognitive skills?
Mind games improve your cognitive thinking skills by exercising your brain on thinking outside of the box.
Doing a repetitive job or routine could be relaxing and makes you feel in control and stable.
However, we need to exercise our brains every now and then to sharpen our minds.
If you happen to be an enthusiast of an active lifestyle, you would probably do sets of push-ups, laps of running, eating the right diet according to your body goals and so much more.
You do this to make your body healthy, strong, and beautiful according to your liking.
The same goes with exercising your mind.
We need to go out of our comfort zone and give a little stretch to our brains to make them more strong and more flexible.
To do this, we can play different sorts of games from computer games to puzzle games like Sudoku.
Playing Sudoku can help sharpen your mind by allowing you to eliminate and decide which numbers should be put in place.
Yes, it may sound easy but when you’re already at that moment, it’s not.
It’s like saying that you need to warm up and stretch your hamstrings first before running so it will help you perform better.
What cognitive skills should be improved all through your life?
There are many cognitive skills that we need to improve in our lives but, the most important ones are self-control, logic, critical, decision-making, and problem-solving skills.
1. Self-control
Self-control literally means that you have the power to control yourself.
When you have self-control, you won’t easily give in to your emotional impulses but rather you hold on and think if it’s the right thing to say or do at that specific moment.
Usually, we should learn how to control our emotions while we are young with the help of our care-taker like our guardians, parents, siblings, and anyone who is older than us.
However, this cognitive skill should be learned all through our lives because it’s unending life-long learning.
We will face different hard situations where our patience will be tested to its limits that is why we need to practice it more often.
Playing Sudoku will help you practice your self-control by making you sit still for quite a time until you finish it.
Also, it will force you to go on a process where you need to follow a certain logical step procedure just for you to complete one.
2. Logical thinking skills
Logical thinking skills are your ability to reason based on how you perceive the problem you’re facing.
Playing Sudoku is one good example of how to practice your logical thinking skills because it gives you the liberty to decide on what action you should do based on the given numbers on the puzzle.
You see, the basic logic is important in our everyday lives.
It helps us to address what went wrong with the broken oven toaster you have at home, what caused your significant person his or her annoyance towards you, or why your boss put a lot of job for you just before the weekends.
With that, you’ll know what action you need to do in order for you to solve it and make your day aligned properly.
3. Critical thinking skills
Critical thinking skills are your ability to analyze your problems in a more specific way by using your logic.
Your logical thinking skills and critical thinking skills work hand-in-hand.
To explain further, you need your logical thinking skills to assess and evaluate what is your problem, while your critical thinking skills will help you dig deeper into what is your problem and separate the ones that a sensible and not.
In solving your Sudoku puzzle, you will face a lot of possible solutions to it but only one answer is correct.
You need to know which of those solutions will get you to complete it and which solutions won’t.
4. Decision-making skills
Decision-making skills are your ability to make up your mind.
In my experience, we need to hasten our decision-making skills every single day of our lives.
From the time you open your eyes in the morning, you’ll decide whether you want to sleep again after turning off your alarm or get up from your bed to wash up and get ready for your day.
Or whether you’ll spend your money buying unnecessary things that will clutter your room or save your money for your future.
Every single day of our lives is all about making decisions.
In playing Sudoku, we can practice it without having the worry to commit mistakes that will change our lives significantly because when I put a wrong number combination in that puzzle, we can easily start over again by erasing it.
From there, we learn from our mistakes and I think it’s important to help more cautious with our choices in our lives.
5. Problem-thinking skills
Problem-thinking skills are your ability to find an answer to your problem.
We face different sorts of problems in our entire lifetime thus, it’s essential to never stop learning new ways how to solve and deal with them.
As adults, we are faced with a lot of problems from how to pay our bills, what job should be able to help us live properly, what meal should we have today, and where we put the remote control last night.
We need specific answers to those problems to get along with our entire day and lives.
In order to hasten our problem-solving skills, we should accept the fact that we need to face problems in our lives, solve them, and learn techniques on how to get along with them.
Playing Sudoku is an example of a black and white problem-solving activity.
The problem is for you to solve which number combinations should match to complete it.
There are different solutions you might encounter but only one will be the correct one.
When you’re doing Sudoku for quite some time now, you’ll be able to devise your own techniques to make it faster.
Check this article now to learn some tricks to your Sudoku puzzle:
What is the trick to solving Sudoku puzzles?
SUMMARY
Playing Sudoku puzzle is a good mind game that we can play in our spare time. It can help us hasten and strengthen our cognitive thinking skills especially our self-control, logic, critical, decision-making, and problem-solving skills.
Want to learn more?
Check this one out: Does Sudoku help with anxiety?
