One of the few games on my phone is a mobile version of an old, simple but often frustrating pattern recognition game called "Set."

One of the few games on my phone is a mobile version of an old, simple but often frustrating pattern recognition game called "Set." It's excellent for keeping your brain sharp.

The game goes like this: You get dealt 12 cards to start all laid out in front of you. Each card has 1, 2 or 3 shapes; each of the shapes on the card is either red, green or blue; and each shape is either fully shaded with the color, striped, or clear w/ just the color on the edge of the shape(s).

The object for each 12 cards is to find a "Set," which consists of three cards that are either:

a) all alike in at least one way
b) not at all alike

If you have any doubts whether any three cards are a set, the rule "If two of the cards are one thing and one of them is not, it's not a Set" usually helps.

Anyway, I discovered something amazing today after playing the app version of this game for the umpteenth time over many years. The app has a version of the game that only does solid shapes, and so it makes the game way less challenging, and a lot faster. What I discovered and have repeatedly demonstrated now is that my score and time for completing the most complex version of this game improved remarkably after just playing the easy version once before trying the harder version.