| Can you find the 40 British railway station names hidden in our puzzle? Posted by ChrisB at 18:19, 31st January 2026 |     |
From the BBC
Can you spot the 40 railway stations from the cryptic clues in the picture above and get one over on Darragh Ennis from The Chase?
The brainteaser was dreamt up by Alzheimer's Research UK to encourage people to keep their minds active during free time or on their daily commute.
Quiz master Ennis, known on the TV show as "The Menace", saw his dad pass away in 2024 after spending his later years living with dementia.
The scientist, who studied and lives in Oxford, is hoping the puzzle can help people keep their brains "sharp" but admitted he had so far only found 32 of the 40 hidden stations from across England and Wales.
The campaign is being supported by Great Western Railway (GWR), which has been advertising it at stations including Oxford, Didcot, Newbury and Maidenhead.
Ennis said the brain was "something you have to exercise or else it gets lazy".
"If you don't use different parts of your brain for problem-solving and things like that, the synapses and the circuits don't get strengthened," he added.
He said his dad had experienced "a very gradual, slow decline".
"We started noticing quite a long time ago that his memory was going," Ennis said.
"You would sit in a room with my dad for years and sometimes you would have the same conversation 20 or 30 times.
"While that can be very frustrating, it's at least still a conversation, but for other people it's much more aggressive and they disappear completely."
Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, external - a condition often leading to memory loss and challenges with taking on independent tasks.
"Doing a crossword a day is not going to prevent you getting dementia if your genetics are that way or you have some other disease, but it changes the odds a little," Ennis added.
"So for something that's so small that can help keep you sharp in other ways, it's worth a try."
He said the use of technology for that purpose "isn't inherently bad".
"I do four puzzles a day before I get out of bed and they're all done on my phone - it's not the technology that's wrong, it's how we use it."
[Image from here is not available to guests]
A study by Alzheimer's Research UK among 2,006 adults in the south of England recently showed just one in three of them were doing daily puzzles or challenges in their free time.
About half were instead turning to passive pursuits such as scrolling on their phones or watching shows.
Samantha Benham-Hermetz, executive director at the charity, said: "As each generation ages there are different things that are both protective for brain health and also distracting.
"We want to send this message to the public that there are lots of things within their control that they can do to reduce their risk of developing dementia as they grow older."
"One of the things that I've noticed with the puzzle is when you look at it at different times you see different things, so it really is challenging your brain to do things you wouldn't normally do or in different ways," she added.
The puzzle can be found on the charity's website, external, with some of the clues unveiled on its social media channels.
The brainteaser was dreamt up by Alzheimer's Research UK to encourage people to keep their minds active during free time or on their daily commute.
Quiz master Ennis, known on the TV show as "The Menace", saw his dad pass away in 2024 after spending his later years living with dementia.
The scientist, who studied and lives in Oxford, is hoping the puzzle can help people keep their brains "sharp" but admitted he had so far only found 32 of the 40 hidden stations from across England and Wales.
The campaign is being supported by Great Western Railway (GWR), which has been advertising it at stations including Oxford, Didcot, Newbury and Maidenhead.
Ennis said the brain was "something you have to exercise or else it gets lazy".
"If you don't use different parts of your brain for problem-solving and things like that, the synapses and the circuits don't get strengthened," he added.
He said his dad had experienced "a very gradual, slow decline".
"We started noticing quite a long time ago that his memory was going," Ennis said.
"You would sit in a room with my dad for years and sometimes you would have the same conversation 20 or 30 times.
"While that can be very frustrating, it's at least still a conversation, but for other people it's much more aggressive and they disappear completely."
Alzheimer's is the most common form of dementia, external - a condition often leading to memory loss and challenges with taking on independent tasks.
"Doing a crossword a day is not going to prevent you getting dementia if your genetics are that way or you have some other disease, but it changes the odds a little," Ennis added.
"So for something that's so small that can help keep you sharp in other ways, it's worth a try."
He said the use of technology for that purpose "isn't inherently bad".
"I do four puzzles a day before I get out of bed and they're all done on my phone - it's not the technology that's wrong, it's how we use it."
[Image from here is not available to guests]
A study by Alzheimer's Research UK among 2,006 adults in the south of England recently showed just one in three of them were doing daily puzzles or challenges in their free time.
About half were instead turning to passive pursuits such as scrolling on their phones or watching shows.
Samantha Benham-Hermetz, executive director at the charity, said: "As each generation ages there are different things that are both protective for brain health and also distracting.
"We want to send this message to the public that there are lots of things within their control that they can do to reduce their risk of developing dementia as they grow older."
"One of the things that I've noticed with the puzzle is when you look at it at different times you see different things, so it really is challenging your brain to do things you wouldn't normally do or in different ways," she added.
The puzzle can be found on the charity's website, external, with some of the clues unveiled on its social media channels.
[Image from here is not available to guests]
Some of them are quite difficult....
