Cognitive Reserve: Why Wordplay Keeps the Brain in the Game

Think of your brain as a savings account. Every time you learn something new, engage in conversation, or wrestle with a Saturday crossword, you’re making a deposit — not in dollars, but in cognitive reserve.

Cognitive reserve is the brain’s ability to improvise, adapt, and find alternate routes when age or illness (like Alzheimer’s or stroke) tries to block the way. The more “mental deposits” you’ve made over a lifetime—through education, social engagement, and challenging activities—the more resilient your brain tends to be.

And that’s where crosswords come in.

When you fill in those little white boxes, you’re doing far more than recalling trivia or vocabulary. Crossword solving lights up multiple regions of the brain at once — memory, reasoning, verbal fluency, pattern recognition. You’re retrieving information (“Who was the goddess of the dawn again?”), testing hypotheses (“If it’s Eos, does that make 5-Down olive or ovule?”), and managing frustration (“How can five letters mean irate when I already have peeved?”).

In other words, you’re training your brain to be flexible—to shift gears, form associations, and recover from mistakes. That’s cognitive reserve in action.

Neuroscientists often compare cognitive reserve to having a network of alternate highways in the brain. If one path gets blocked, others can reroute the traffic. Crossword solvers, lifelong learners, and puzzle lovers tend to have more of these neural detours. That’s one reason research consistently finds that mentally stimulating activities—especially ones involving language—may help delay or reduce the impact of cognitive decline.

Of course, crossword solving isn’t a magic bullet. You still need good sleep, social connection, exercise, and a balanced diet to keep your brain humming. But few activities combine focus, play, and pleasure quite like crosswords do.

So the next time someone teases you for spending your morning with a pencil and a grid, you can tell them you’re not procrastinating—you’re building neural wealth.

As one solver put it: “Crosswords keep me sharp enough to know when I’m wrong—and curious enough to try again.”

Michelle Arnot is President of Gray Panthers NYC and a lifelong “acrossionado”—her own term for devoted crossword enthusiasts. A publishing professional turned nonprofit leader, Michelle has produced conferences, webinars, and community programs for organizations around the world. She currently serves on New York State’s Master Plan for Aging Long Term Services and Supports Subcommittee and represents GPNYC at the United Nations Stakeholder Group on Ageing and in a WHO long-term care focus group.

A noted crossword historian and author of Crossword Puzzles for Dummies and What’s Gnu? A History of the Crossword, Michelle has judged the American Crossword Puzzle Tournament and lectured internationally on the art and science of puzzles. She holds degrees from Beloit College and Columbia University.