An online, Flash-based collection of cognitive tests and exercises, Lumosity is meant to be played daily for about 10 minutes per go and, as it turns out, there is a bird called a grebe, pardon the tangent.

At first blush, it comes off as a perfectly solid time waster of point and click and think and type and pay attention and calculate and deduce and enter and recall and spell grebe, that bird is a grebe, and so on.

More importantly, it grows on you -- not just for the enduring nature of its clever puzzles and activities, but for the actual path you can sense those activities taking you down, a path toward a better memory (or the skills required to better employ the memory you already possess), faster thought processing, wordsmithing, pattern recognition -- basically, more focused thinking.

An oddity in the "casual game" realm, you actually subscribe to Lumosity rather than pay to play in perpetuity. This plan lends itself to the overarching point of it all: You're scored, charted and guided though each session; 30 sessions later - a month's worth of daily play - and you're done, here's how you've scored, here's how you improved along the way, now go away or sign up for another month - or hey, how about a year? - and keep at it, rah rah brain.

Visually, the game is nowhere near an $80 annual "rental," as it were, but there is clearly some serious science in its technical design; substance (way) before style. Plus, creators at Lumo Labs are always adding new features and tests (apparently), so it's not like you're waiting for the sequel to come out. This is it, upgrade included (also apparently).

Boasting a long list of actual doctors, neuroscientists and other certified smart people in the developer credits, Lumosity really does seem like videogaming that's good for your brain. Imparting a genuine sense of satisfaction along the way is quite the bonus -- it feels like "fun."

Lumosity TIP: Seriously, a grebe is a bird and it's spelled g.r.e.b.e.