Games to Play When You're Bored (Better Than Scrolling)

· 2 min read

Most of us know the feeling: five free minutes, and your thumb opens a feed before your brain has decided anything. Twenty minutes later you have seen a lot and remember nothing. If you would rather spend those minutes on something that leaves you a little sharper, here are some ideas.

With pen and paper

  • Dots and Boxes. Draw a grid of dots. Take turns joining two neighbouring dots. Whoever closes a box writes their initial in it and goes again. Simple, and surprisingly tactical.
  • Word ladder. Turn one word into another by changing one letter at a time, with a real word at every step: COLD, CORD, CARD, WARD, WARM.
  • Draw a maze for someone else, then swap. Designing a maze is a puzzle of its own.
  • Sudoku or a crossword from a newspaper or a puzzle book.

In your head, no screen at all

  • The alphabet game. Pick a category, like animals or cities, and name one for every letter from A to Z.
  • Mental maths chains. Start at 100 and keep subtracting 7. How far do you get without a mistake?
  • Twenty questions, if you have company.

On your phone, but not a feed

Phone games are fine. The trick is choosing ones that end. Look for:

  • Short levels that take one to five minutes.
  • A natural stopping point, such as a daily puzzle or the end of a chapter.
  • No timers or lives that call you back on someone else's schedule.
  • Offline play, so it works in the metro too (how to check).

Puzzle types that fit well: daily word puzzles, sudoku, nonograms, sliding blocks, and route puzzles like BallRoute, where you turn arrows so a ball reaches the exit. A level takes a minute or two, and there is always a reason to come back for three stars.

How to swap scrolling for puzzles

  1. Put a puzzle game where your most-scrolled app used to be on your home screen. Habits follow your thumb.
  2. Set a small target: one level, or today's daily challenge, then stop.
  3. Keep a paper option. A puzzle book in your bag still works when your battery doesn't.

Being bored isn't a bad thing. It is your brain asking for something to do, so give it a puzzle. And if you wonder whether puzzles do anything beyond passing the time, here is what the research says.

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