Ask HN: Which games do you recommend to improve thinking and reasoning?

For getting out of the "just follow instructions" rut and for the joy of exploration, I can't recommend Outer Wilds enough. Go in absolutely blind, don't look anything up if you can help it. You'll have to piece together the story from (sometimes pretty obtuse) clues, and you'll have to fly your ship through a quasi-realistic physics simulation. There's no real permanent failure states, and no real dead ends.

I'd be truly shocked if anyone here on this website didn't enjoy this game, if not love it.

https://store.steampowered.com/app/753640/Outer_Wilds/

That seems like an overly strong claim. It's probably true for many games, where skill in the game leads to no meaningful skill or knowledge outside the game short other games with the same or similar mechanic. But that doesn't mean that games, universally, cannot have some value in imparting either knowledge or skill applicable beyond the game itself.

Take Factorio, as a for-instance. Intended or not (I've never read what the creators themselves thought about when making the game), it does, if someone pays attention, end up teaching the player both how to apply logic and some understanding of systems theory and basic operations research (optimizations). In particular, trying to manage the flow of objects (much like a real factory) through various points and the assembly/processing time. Now, are people sitting down and ending up with a basic understanding of operations research in a technical sense? Probably not, but in an intuitive sense, I'd wager that most come away with something.

Kerbal Space Program is another game that actually does end up forcing players, short absolute brute force like I've seen some people pull off, to consider the rocket equation and orbital dynamics (even if simplified). It spawned multiple series of YouTube videos teaching people higher level math and physics topics.

Human Resource Machine and 7 Billion Humans (second a sequel to the first), can't really be brute forced. You have to learn some semblance of programming skills in order to complete all the challenges, short of cheating and finding solutions online. I suppose someone could try every program permutation and never learn anything, but they'd probably not have finished level 2 or 3 even if they started with the games when they were released.

Can you recommend a physical board?

Yellow Mountain Imports has a range of high value boards and stones. I recommend getting the real stones and not the cheaper plastic imitations—the tactile difference is worth the modest cost increase.

I have no affiliation, just a happy customer.

One particular thing I learned from playing chess, which turned out to be applicable in business/office-environment, is the idea of creating "space" for yourself. It's a little hard to convey without making it seem trivial, but let's say someone is acting aggressively, you can sort of box them away from you a bit (in chess you would use pawns for this, in business any proxy will do) and give yourself space to operate (move your pieces around, get you project done), and once you've got them boxed away you can relax and do what you need to do, you don't have to worry about them for a comfortable amount of time.

It's this particular sense of space which I found was improved by playing a fair amount of chess, and there were moments when I had to deal with more aggressive people and I found that I wasn't so flustered because I knew I could create space when I needed it.