Brain Boot Camp

The ultimate mental workout: Mensa-level logic, verbal and numerical tests

Simon Wootton, Terry Horne

• Publisher: Teach Yourself
• Year: 2012
• Print ISBN: 9781444163520
• eBook ISBN: 9781444163544
• Topic: Personal Development
• Subtopic: Self Improvement

Give your brain the ultimate mental workout with Brain Boot Camp - a collection of Mensa-level challenges,
puzzles and tests. Designed to test and improve your mental ability in all the key fields, from verbal reasoning to
logic and numerical thinking, this is a series of increasingly difficult workouts that will challenge you on every level
and equip you to face any mental challenge. Complete with appendices that give you extra help and support on
everything from diet to male and female thinking, this is a fun and engaging mental boot camp that will help you
get ahead on every level.

The circuits

Before you start...

Before you begin the brain boot camp, here are a few reminders and pointers about how you should approach the circuits:

The brain training workout has two components: a series of 14 blocks of exercises (or circuits), and 14 cryptic crosswords. You can try either the series of exercises, or the cryptic crosswords, or both. Since each circuit is composed of the same mix of exercises, some easy and some difficult, then your score should improve between Circuit 1 and Circuit 14. In the case of the 14 cryptic crossword puzzles, you should find that you can do them more easily as you work your way through from Circuit 1 to Circuit 14. That is because the puzzles are of similar levels of difficulty and you will get better with practice.

Solving a cryptic crossword simultaneously involves traffic between many different areas of your brain as you try to:

• use logic
• recollect obscure bits of general knowledge
• make creative associations between the bits you remember
• count letters and spaces
• hold several possibilities in your short-term memory
• decide on the most likely possibilities
• analyse the best way to crosscheck your decision, and, finally,
• manage your motivation and frustration!

Cryptic crosswords don’t just test your brain power – more importantly, the attempts you make to solve the cryptic clues leave new neural traces and connections in your brain. These new neural connections create new cognitive capacity that improves your performance on other thinking tasks and also helps to protect your improved performance against disease by creating reserve cognitive capacity.

All these separate aspects of your brain development are intensified if you do, or discuss, the puzzle with another person. Hence the brain developing power of paired learning, or of acting as a ‘critical friend’, or of being a ‘thoughtful companion’. So, please take every opportunity to work on brain training exercises with someone else.

Try not to skip a puzzle if you find it hard. Discuss it with someone else. Be persistent. The churning is the learning – especially if done aloud and especially if done with another person. Professor Timiras found that mechanical memory training, done in isolation, produced only a short-term gain in overall mental performance. The gain faded unless there was constant repetition, recall and reinforcement.

Now, turn either to the first circuit – or to the first cryptic crossword (these are located after each circuit). Keep a note of how many of the circuit puzzles, or cryptic clues, you can solve. You will, we promise, progressively be able to solve more of the problems, more quickly.

Above all, have fun!

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Circuit 1

The Titanic was built by professionals, the Ark was built by amateurs.

Terry Horne

Q1 Are you afraid to start? Make your way from Fear to Hope, changing one letter at a time.

Q2 When does coffee taste like soil?

Q3 The letters A, B, C, D, E, F each represent a different digit in the range 0–8. Which letters represent which numbers? (There are hints and clues below.)

Hint: First line gives B = 0; third line gives E = 1 since 2 digits cannot add to 20; seventh line is 42 + 26 = 68).

Clue: C = 4, A = 2, D = 6

Q4 The only Bond girl to appear in three Bond films, in 1974, 1983, 1985, now divides her continuing career between the USA and her native Sweden.

__ __ __ __ / __ __ __ __ __ (4, 5)

Hint: Surname belonging to someone from Eden.

Q5 Can you get yourself up from being idle to become the academic stars at a university (one letter at a time)?

Hint: Start in a daze get it finished.

Q6 Every block in this pyramid contains a number which is the sum of the two on which it rests. What are the missing numbers?

Q7 Complete the Sudoku.

On every circuit, questions 8, 9 and 10 will be about numbers – their significance in nature, mathematics, science, religion, mythology, art or history.

Q8 __ __ __ __ __ __ __ tons of TNT...

Table of contents

• Cover 
• Halftitle
• Title
• Contents 
• Meet the authors
• Introduction: Your Amazing Brain
• The Circuits
• Answers
• Taking it Further
• Copyright