7 Fun Brain-Building Games to Play with Alexa, Right Now

Alexa, can you help me keep my brain sharp? Yep, Alexa can do just that via the Amazon Echo. If you don’t have an Echo, do you know what one is? The Amazon Echo is a hands-free speaker you control with your voice. Echo connects to Alexa, the Echo’s voice assistant, who quickly feels like part of the family. The Echo can be used to play music, ask questions, build skills, provide news and weather, and a ton more.

The niftiest features of the Echo are Alexa’s skills. New skills are added all the time, but my favorites are the fun, brain-building games you can play with Alexa. These are games that make you think, get your mind working, and improve your cognitive health. Research, including the Mayo Clinic Study of Aging, shows that cognitive activities keep us mentally sharp and reduce the odds of developing mild cognitive impairment.

Here are my top seven favorites to get our brains active.

Brain Workout

A popular skill-builder, Brain Workout is designed to improve your focus, concentration, memory, processing speed, math skills, and more. Each workout is interactive and personalized with exercises that adjust over time. Each session provides six questions and performance is tracked each day. As you progress, the questions become more challenging.

Prompt: “Alexa, start Brain Workout” or “Alexa, launch Brain Workout”

Crazy Math

Call me a nerd, but I love Crazy Math and my brain benefits. In this game, Alexa asks math questions and you try to answer as many as possible. The questions include addition, subtraction, multiplication and division, and increase in difficulty as the game progresses. You can either do the calculations in your head, or by jotting the numbers down like an old-fashioned math problem. You can ask Alexa to repeat if you didn’t catch what she said, or need a bit more time to solve.

Prompt: “Alexa, open Crazy Math”

Train My Brain

Keep your mind sharp by playing Train My Brain daily. Every time you play, Alexa will give you six random brain teasers with only eight seconds to answer each. The categories include basic math, word puzzles, spelling backwards, memory games, and trivia. Unlike some other games, Alexa won’t repeat the questions. When you first begin this game, it’s fairly easy, but gets harder each day.

Prompt: “Alexa, start Train My Brain”

Song Quiz

If you love music, Song Quiz is a blast! You tell Alexa the number of players and select a decade from the options given. You can either challenge your friends and family or, if playing solo, will be matched to someone else across the country. You then listen to a song snippet and try to guess the correct title and artist for points. You get partial points for guessing either the song title or artist. My husband and I love playing this game, with pop music from the 80s and 70s as our favorite.

Prompt: “Alexa, start Song Quiz” or “Alexa, open Song Quiz”

Jeopardy

Wildly popular, playing Jeopardy with Alexa is just like the game show, complete with Alex Trebek and Alexa. New clues are available every weekday and you play the same categories as shown on the latest episode of the Jeopardy show. There are a wide range of categories, including sports, pop culture, travel, and world history.

Prompt: “Alexa, play Jeopardy” or “Alexa, open Jeopardy”

Magoosh Vocabulary Builder

Keep your vocabulary strong with the Magoosh Vocabulary Builder. In this five-question game, Alexa gives you a word and then asks you to name the synonym out of a list of possibilities. It’s a fun way to study more advanced vocabulary. All of the words have been picked by experts who prepare students for the various college entrance exams.

Prompt: “Alexa, start Vocabulary Builder” or “Alexa, launch Vocabulary Builder”

Memory Game

You can use Memory Game to test your ability to remember and repeat a list of words. To start the game, Alexa will say a word and you will have to repeat the word. At each turn, Alexa will add another word to the list, and you will have to repeat the entire list. Sometimes the words in the list are in a specific category, like colors. Other times, the words will come in alphabetical order, with one word for each letter of the alphabet. Sounds easy, but it’s more challenging than you think. My brain hurts after this game, so I guess that’s a good thing.

Prompt: “Alexa, launch Memory Game” or “Alexa, open Memory Game”

The brain is like a muscle. It must be used to keep it strong and in shape. Alexa, let’s get started!