Can anyone recommend any games to develop reasoning skills and general knowledge?

[bigTillyMint]

I was wondering which games would be good for 7+'s to play - bought, or "in your head" type!

Bumping for you.

battleships, chess, draughts, backgammon, connect four and guess who are all good for reasoning.

Mastermind, with the coloured pegs.

Blokus is quite good for strategic thinking and spatial awareness (I am crap at it ).

Risk is excellent for strategic thinking if you don't mind a VERY long game...

'Katamino' is excellent for visual spacial development as is 'Make n Break'.
DD loves Trivial Pursuits.

DS (9) loves 'Date, Daisy Donkey' (a pen and paper general knowledge game)

In one column write a series of categories:
Our family standard is

Fruit
Flower
Animal
Bird
Vegetable
Country
City
River
Girl's Name
Boy's Name

But you can improvise to play to DCs strengths (we often have a Pokemon category...)

Then pick a random letter of the alphabet.
Write down an example of each category.
When someone has finished, everyone stops (or you can do it to time to be fair to DCs).

Score 1 point for each legitimate answer that nobody else has got (or if DCs are small, just give points for getting something).

OK we're a family of nerds

"Articulate for kids" is good for general knowledge and for getting them to verbally describe things.

General knowledge - reading, talking about, poring over First News. There isn't really a game substitute for just being informed ... there is of course the Junior version of Trivial Pursuit, but that just tests general knowledge rather than builds it.

Reasoning, you might like to get Games for Thinking which is a collection of ideas for schools, but don't all need big groups to work. We take ours in the car for long journeys - not to do throughout, but it's a fab remedy for those crux moments of scratchy boredom