There's a reason Solitaire and Sudoku have outlasted nearly every gaming trend of the last 30 years. These games ask something specific of your brain — tracking card positions across multiple piles, eliminating number candidates row by row, planning piece moves two steps out. That kind of focused, rules-bound thinking is genuinely uncommon in most daily routines.
You won't turn into a grandmaster from a few rounds of Chess online, and researchers are rightly cautious about overclaiming 'brain training' benefits. But there's consistent evidence that regularly engaging with structured puzzles helps maintain pattern recognition and mental flexibility, particularly as we get older. The habit of sitting with a problem until it resolves has value beyond any measurable score.
There's also the simpler case: a five-minute Minesweeper session or a quick Wordle round gives your attention something finite and self-contained. You start, you finish, and you move on with a small and specific sense of completion. That particular satisfaction is harder to come by than it sounds.