Hi, this is Ray.

I want to tell you about the night I lost a game of Settlers of Catan to my 11-year-old nephew. He had no mercy. He blocked my longest road. He stole my wheat. He grinned with the cold-eyed confidence of a man who had seen the future and knew I was not in it. By the end, he had eight victory points and I had a deep suspicion that I was, in fact, the family's weakest link. My sister was crying laughing. I was rebuilding my ego with chips and salsa.

But here's the weird thing. About a week later, I sat down to learn a complicated new framework for work… the kind of dense, multi-variable system that normally would have made my eyes glaze over by page 4. And I noticed something. I was tracking it. I was holding multiple moving pieces in my head, anticipating how they'd interact, planning ahead. The mental machinery felt… loose. Limber. Available.

My first thought was "huh, weird." My second thought was "wait. Was Catan training me for this?"

Spoiler: yeah. Kind of. And the more I dug into the research, the more I realized that the humble board game… dice, cards, tokens, the whole cardboard-and-plastic shebang… is one of the most underrated cognitive training tools available. Not "study aid" in the boring sense. More like a stealth gym for the exact mental muscles you need to learn anything well. Today's newsletter is about why your weekly game night might be the most productive thing you do all week.

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Most people think of board games as entertainment. Which they are. But under the surface, your brain is doing some legitimately heavy lifting. Every move in a strategy game involves a stack of cognitive operations: reading the current state of the board, holding the rules in working memory, anticipating what your opponents might do, planning two or three moves ahead, adapting when someone does something unexpected, and then doing it all again on the next turn.

This bundle of skills has a name in cognitive science. It's called executive function, and it's basically the central operating system of your brain. As one research summary put it, board games recruit attention, working memory, cognitive flexibility, planning, and social communication (abilities that researchers group as executive functions), and when those systems are challenged in playful settings, they appear to get sharper with practice, with the benefits lasting well after game night.

Let me translate that out of researcher-speak. Working memory is your brain's RAM… how much you can hold in your head at once. Cognitive flexibility is your ability to switch strategies when something changes. Planning is, well, planning. These are the EXACT skills that determine whether you can learn a complicated subject. Every time you sit down to study calculus, or a new programming language, or a foreign grammar, you're loading information into working memory, switching strategies when you get stuck, and planning your next learning step. A board game trains those exact systems, except instead of feeling like work, it feels like trying to crush your nephew at Catan. Different vibe. Same cognitive workout.

Okay, so the theory is nice. But does this actually translate to measurable improvements? Turns out yes, and the studies are kind of incredible.

Let's start with kids, because that's where most of the rigorous research has been done. A 2024 study published in Brain Sciences ran a randomized intervention with 234 third- and fourth-grade students. The kids were split into three groups: one played memory-focused board games, one played math-focused board games, one was a control group that just had regular class. After eight weeks of bi-weekly 30-minute sessions, the researchers measured cognitive and academic outcomes. The results were striking. According to the study, in third grade, playing math games showed medium-to-large effect sizes in visuospatial short-term memory, updating memory, number operations and number ranking compared to the control group, with significant transfer effects from both memory and math game training. "Medium-to-large effect sizes" is researcher language for "this actually worked, and not by a small amount." Eight weeks of board games. Measurable improvements in memory AND math.

Chess, the OG strategy game, has its own pile of evidence. A two-year intervention study on schoolchildren found that the experimental group that received chess training had significant gains in working memory compared to the control group, with researchers attributing the transfer to the fact that while playing chess, children evaluate positions, visualize new positions in their mind, and choose moves based on information stored in their mind. That's not just "kids who play chess are smart"… correlation doesn't equal causation, and chess kids also tend to be the kind of kids whose parents drive them to chess club. This was a controlled study where chess was the intervention. The kids actually got better at working memory because they played chess. Their brains learned to hold and manipulate more information at once. That's a transferable skill that will help them in literally every academic subject they ever encounter.

A separate randomized controlled trial looking at modern board and card games (think your Ticket to Rides and your Splendors, not just chess) found similar results. The study reported significant time effects in cognitive flexibility and inhibition, and to a lesser extent in working memory, in both gaming groups, suggesting that playing modern board and card games (excluding games dominated by luck) could be beneficial for executive functions. Translation: it's not just chess. The cognitive benefits seem to come from games that demand strategy, planning, and decision-making… which is most modern designer board games. The Mario Party game where you all just press random buttons and laugh? Probably less helpful, cognitively. Loved by all. Trains nothing. We accept this trade-off.

If you're reading this thinking "great, I'll have my kids play more Catan, but what about my own decaying adult brain"… I have you covered. The adult research is just as compelling.

A study from the University of Edinburgh tested over 1,000 people aged 70 for memory, problem-solving, thinking speed, and general cognitive ability. They specifically looked at how board game and card game habits related to cognitive trajectories as people aged. The results were striking: people who increased their game playing in later years experienced less decline in thinking skills in their seventies, particularly in memory function and thinking speed. Reading that, I had to put the article down for a second. The implication isn't just "games are nice." It's that adopting a board game habit later in life might literally protect your brain from cognitive decline. Your weekly D&D group is, technically, a longevity intervention. Cite that next time someone calls it nerdy.

This connects to a broader concept in neuroscience called cognitive reserve… the idea that mental activities you do throughout life build up a kind of buffer that protects your brain against age-related decline. Strategy games sit in a sweet spot for cognitive reserve because, as researchers note, board games mix strategy, memory, learning, and social interaction… the combination of which makes them especially effective at building reserve compared to single-modal cognitive activities. One activity, multiple cognitive systems engaged. That's efficiency that would make Hermione weep with joy.

Okay, so board games train executive function, working memory, planning, cognitive flexibility. Cool. But why does that matter if your goal is, say, learning Spanish or finishing your master's degree?

Because every learning task you've ever struggled with has been a working memory and executive function problem in disguise. You feel "overwhelmed" by a textbook? That's working memory overload. You can't focus on studying for more than 20 minutes? That's an executive function and inhibition issue. You start a learning project enthusiastically and abandon it after a week? That's planning and self-regulation. The skills board games train are NOT a separate, unrelated category from the skills you need to learn well. They're the same skills.

This is why the "transfer effects" finding from those studies matters so much. Researchers measure transfer when training in one area improves performance in a different area. Most cognitive training programs (those "brain games" apps that promised to make you smarter) have notoriously bad transfer. You get better at the specific app and don't get better at anything else. Board games seem to be an exception. Maybe because they're inherently rich, social, multi-modal experiences. Maybe because they require real-time adaptation in ways no app can replicate. Either way, the research suggests the cognitive benefits actually generalize. Time at the table → better at thinking generally.

Here's how I'd actually use this in your life:

Pick games that demand strategy, not luck. Monopoly is mostly dice rolls and is therefore a war crime against your nervous system. Look for games where the outcome is mostly determined by your decisions. Catan, Ticket to Ride, Carcassonne, Splendor, Wingspan, 7 Wonders, Pandemic, Azul, anything by Reiner Knizia or Uwe Rosenberg if you want to nerd out hard. Chess, Go, and backgammon if you want classics. Even card games like bridge or hearts qualify if there's real decision-making involved.

Aim for once a week, minimum. The studies showing benefits used regular, repeated play, not one-off sessions. Think of it like going to the gym. One trip doesn't do much. A consistent habit reshapes you.

Play with people, not just apps. A huge chunk of the cognitive workout comes from the social and interactive elements… reading other players, anticipating their strategies, communicating, negotiating. Solo apps lose a lot of that. If you can't get a regular group, even one consistent gaming buddy is gold.

Lose gracefully. Learn from it. This part is more philosophical, but it matters. The cognitive benefit isn't just from winning… it's from the constant analysis, post-mortem, "what should I have done differently" loop. That reflective habit is itself a learning skill. Every game is a study session for your decision-making. Even when you get crushed by a smug 11-year-old. Especially then.

Don't sweat the "complexity." You don't need to start with chess or some 4-hour war game. Filler games (the 20-30 minute strategic ones) have been specifically studied and shown to provide real cognitive benefits. You can get a meaningful workout in less than an episode of TV. Easier than going to a real gym. Snacks are also more socially acceptable.

Here's what I think is happening underneath all the research. Board games are one of the few activities in modern life that demand sustained, focused, multi-variable thinking in a state of relaxed engagement. You're not stressed (most of the time). You're not passively consuming. You're not multitasking. You're locked into a complex problem with full attention, but in a context that feels like fun. That state (engaged but unstressed) is basically the perfect brain state for plasticity and learning. Your brain is wide open, your stress response is offline, and you're being asked to do hard cognitive work that you actively WANT to do.

That's a state most adults almost never enter. And it might be why an evening of Catan can feel more mentally restorative AND more cognitively activating than scrolling for the same amount of time. You finish a game session feeling sharper. You finish a scroll session feeling like a husk. Same time, opposite effects. Choose wisely.

So the next time someone gives you a hard time about your overflowing shelf of board games, your weekly Pathfinder campaign, or your tendency to drag a copy of Wingspan to family gatherings, just smile knowingly. They think you're playing. You know you're training. The dice are just your weights.

Keep learning (and keep rolling),

Ray