Of course. Games like go can help reduce the effects of Alzheimer[1]. I'm sure there are studies for chess too. Sports are games with obvious health, mental an

Of course. Games like go can help reduce the effects of Alzheimer[1]. I'm sure there are studies for chess too. Sports are games with obvious health, mental and social benefits. On a more intuitive level (aka I don't know if it's been researched), I would be surprised if most board games don't improve, at least a bit, the analytical thinking useful for many engineering fields (or even day to day life). Challenges is a term too broad, you can imagine countless ones that have practical benefits. Learning-to-play-an-instrument-in-a-month challenge for example. 100 push-ups a day for a month. Read one book a month. [1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548213/ https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4548213/