Meanwhile, games like chess may not get you laid right away, but they build strategic, radical thought processes and are a brilliant way to pass the time.

http://www.askmen.com/fashion/body_and_mind_100/139_better_living.html

Personally, I have no doubt that chess has kept my analytical skills sharp and that Sudoku exercises my ability — quite useful in life — to discard alternatives that won’t work and, by a process of elimination, arrive at the truth.

http://www.dispatch.com/features-story.php?story=dispatch/2006/06/13/20060613...

Through its "Maintain Your Brain" campaign, the Alzheimer's Association urges people to regularly engage in mentally stimulating activities. These may involve doing logic puzzles like Sudoku, reading an entire newspaper daily or going to a museum -- anything that takes you outside your normal range of thinking, said Elizabeth Edgerly, a clinical psychologist who helped develop the campaign.

Mental challenges such as these, researchers theorize, build neural pathways in the brain, buffering against age-related loss and possibly an assault by disease. Some researchers have hypothesized that persistent, effortful mental activity might even retard underlying disease.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2006/02/20/AR20060220010...

Dr Valenzuela said that until the UNSW review, international research had provided mixed messages about the role of what's referred to as brain reserve - education, occupation, IQ and mentally stimulating leisure activities - in protecting people from dementia.

The Australian findings, published in the journal Psychological Medicine, possibly explain why between 10 and 40 per cent of people who have clear pathological signs of Alzheimer's disease at autopsy show no mental impairment before death.

http://www.theage.com.au/news/National/Mental-activity-reduces-dementia-risk/...

Tip No. 6 is to keep learning.  Keep your focus by working puzzles, jumbles, and crosswords. Stretching your brain forces the neurons inside to make new connections and build brainpower.

http://www.thepittsburghchannel.com/news/5419717/detail.html