Best puzzle games to train your brain

This category brings together puzzles on paper, on the table and on screens. Tetris, one of the most famous video games ever made, asks you to fit falling shapes into complete lines. Sudoku is a number grid where every row, column and box must hold each digit once. Tangram is an old Chinese shape puzzle with seven flat pieces that form hundreds of figures. 2048 is a sliding number puzzle that became a worldwide hit on phones. Portal is a first-person puzzle game where you solve rooms by placing two connected openings on walls.

For each puzzle we explain the rules, how difficulty grows and what kind of thinking it trains, such as spatial reasoning, logic or planning. We also share tips that help when you feel stuck. Our ratings are editorial opinions. We do not sell or host these commercial games; this guide only introduces them. If you want to solve something right now, our free in-house browser puzzles, including block, maze and pattern games, run on any phone without installation.