It's there on my 3DS's top screen, that he slowly bobs. A disembodied head, served only by his equally disembodied hands. His name is Dr. Ryuta Kawashima, but coupled with his oddly polygonal form, he looks a ton like Emperor Andross. As for myself, well, call me Fox McCloud. I'm going to weave my way through his assaults, and I will wind up triumphant after his gauntlet of pain.

"I'll do my best. Kawashima won't have his way with me!"

Starting the day off, Dr. Kawashima tries to lower my guard. He asks me if I think he talks too much. Despite making me feel like a simpleton over this past few days, I'm hardly a bully. I tell him no. He's glad to hear it. I'll be glad when he finally announces me as his Brain Age successor.

I wanted to begin today's battle with a warm up; something I felt comfortable with. I take on Devilish Calculations again, hoping to unlock that damned Concentration Training category. My barrier to entry is making it to remembering an answer three questions back. I've struggled with this training exercise for days now.

But something happened. Maybe it was blind luck, or the brain of a greater intellect took me over, but I pulled it off–-I managed to get to 3-Back–-which at this point in time felt as possible as obtaining the Triforce in Ocarina of Time. People have said they've done it, but it has to be a lie.

Wanting to get away from math, I tried out Devilish Blocks. Here, I'm shown a series of images, each one displaying a different arrangement of cubes. As each image appears in succession, one of the cubes will disappear. Starting with just three images, I struggled my way to five, whereupon I crashed and burned. It's crazy just how simple all these exercises sound, then when it comes time to perform, you fail miserably. Perfect incentive to come back to it though.

I decided to wrap up the day with something I knew I could get through painlessly, so I gave Devilish Reading a shot. The game present a sentence, and one of the words in that sentence is underlined. After reading a group of sentences (the number of which, as usual, depends on what level you're playing at) you have to recall those underlined words and write them out. It's very important to read this in a quiet space, time is crucial and background noise only leads the game to think you haven't finished reading the sentence aloud yet. While tricky, I managed to do well, cruising my way up to level 4. 

Oh, and I earned this in the process...