Answers to the Simple IQ Test

cjard

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I did the test at http://simple-iq.com/ and scored 142 points in around 7.5 minutes. Knowing the answers the second time round, I raced through the test in less than 1.5 minutes and scored 149 (correcting the one i knew I had gotten wrong). Not much of a jump for the speed, which made me wonder if I'd gotten some more of the questions wrong. I wrote them down and thought about them, then (failing to find any answers on Google) thought I'd ask some of the more intelligent and logical minds I know, what their opinions of the answers were.. So here it is.
I also listed my age as 10, and raced through the test (getting one wrong) and scored 182.. So I'm also wondering if there is an age at which intelligence as measurable by a test such as this, plateaus..

Note that I'm colouring the words the same as the background to make them near invisible, should you wsh to take the test and not risk this spoiling it. To reveal the Q & A, select the area below:

1)the word vile can be written using four of the letters from the word violates
True. Violates does contain V, I, L and E

2) if you write down all the numbers from 1 to 25, every two numbers following one another will add up to an odd number
True. in any sequence of numbers where the difference is 1, two successive numbers are an odd and an even, and the sum of odd+even is always odd

3) 13 minutes after 5 oclock is exactly 47 minutes before 6 oclock
True. Because there are 60 minutes in an hour, any pair of numbers adding up to 60 can be used to express a time being after 5, and before 6. ie.e 5:45 = quarter to 6

4) the word amity is written by using the first letters of "a mouse in the yard"
True. Read the first letters downwards:
A
Mouse
In
The
Yard

5) if you turn a left hand glove inside out it will become a right hand glove
True. My opinion was divided on this one. Inside out or not, a left hand glove (IMHO "glove intended for the left hand") is still a left hand glove, just like a football is still a football even if it has no air in it. However, I felt the sentiment of the question was whether a left hand glove would fit a right hand, if turned inside out. Note also that some gloves, like surgical ones fit either hand anyway.

4) peter has $15 and he can buy a $30 bike if he borrows $6 from john and $8 from george
False. Given that he would have only $29 in this case, he should wait for the sale or try a bit of bartering

5)the big arow points to the right on a clock that's turned upside down and showing quarter to one
True. Quarter to one on an upside down clock looks like quarter past seven so yep.. the minute hand is pointing to the right

6) in the following sentence, if you were to exchange the string wind for the string will, the sentence would make sense:
They asked him if he would windingly change his wind
True. They asked him if he would willingly change his will, makes sense to me. Bit of a programmers question this one, because I dont see ordinary people referring to sequences of characters as "strings" or being familiar with the semantic of Find/Replace affecting parts of words as well as whole ones

7) if peter looks at a mirror and touches his left ear, his mirror image will touch its right ear
True. I think most people who have used a mirror know that mirrors reverse the image in one plane (as defined by the positioning of the eyes)

8) from the sentence "she dents it" without changing the order of the letters, we can make the words "shed ent sit"
True. Moving the the first space to the right by one ,and the second space left by one, realises the second set of words

9) using exactly three colours you can paint the sides of a cube so that sides of the same colour will never touch
True. Having 6 sides, and considering them in pairs on opposite sides of the cube, it would take 3 colours to paint the opposite sides. Look at your monitor or other square object near by. Touch the left and right side, now touch the top and bottom, then the front and back. You always touched sides that were not connected

10) john weighs 150 lb, anton weighs 130 pounds, peter weighs 200 pounds, two of them can stand together on a weighing machine and will weigh exactly 350 pounds
True. If john and peter at 150 + 200 pounds stand together on the machine, it will read 350 pounds

11) The third vowel in this sentence is O
True. The first is E and the second is I, the third is the O in vOwel

12) seven chickens and two cats have twenty two legs among hem
True. The seven chickes contribute 14 legs. The two cats contribute 8 legs. 14 + 8 = 22

13) if I have a quarter, a dime (10 cents) and 5 cents and i spent 33 cents, i will have fifty two cents
False. A quarter, dime and 5 added are 40 cents. Spending 33 should leave you with 7 cents, not 52. Thankfully, even non americans can answer this question (The first time I took a test like this, I didnt know how many cents were in a dime)

14) there are four letters between K and P in the alphabet
True. In my understanding of the word "between" (i.e. the Oracle sense of the word), it is non inclusive:k L M N O p

15)If the word ERA is written below the word ANT and the word RAT is written below ERA, then the word art will form diagonally
True.
ANT
ERA
RAT

16) 0.55 hours added to half an hour is exactly 85 minutes
False. Even if youre not sure how many minute 0.55 of an hour is(33 minutes), 0.55 about 0.5 which is a half, which is about 30 minutes, added to 30 minutes, is about 60 minutes.. Some fair way off 85 minutes. Just remmeber that there arent 100 minutes in an hour, and 0.55 is not 55 minutes :)

17) five gloves and 3 shoes will most often hold 35 fingers
False. On my world, five gloves hold 20 fingers, and 5 thumbs. Shoes dont generally hold any fingers so they dont contribute. I've looked and looked for the trick in this question, but I cant find it..

18) a house in the form of a donut has 3 doors on the the outside wall and 3 doors on the inside wall. it is possible to pass through all doors only once and end up where you started
False. With this house youre either inside it, in the courtyard, or in the street. You cannot arrange the words "courtyard", "inside" and "street" such that they form the pattern:
__, inside, __, inside, __, inside, __

where the 6th word is the same as the first. (Starting inside the house doesnt count because you'll end up locked out of it after an odd number of doors.)
street, inside, street, inside, courtyard, inside, courtyard
street, inside, courtyard, inside, street, inside, courtyard


19) the words ski, executive and prime and can be combined with the words jump, director and minister
True. Ski-jump, executive-director, prime-minister

20) if tuesday is the 2nd day of the month, then the first sunday would be the sixth of the month
False. Sunday is the fifth day after tuesday making it the 7th of the month, The 6th is a saturday

21) two of the following numbers can add up to the number 17: 11,3,2,14,15
True. Again, i wonderd if this was a trick question because 4 of the numbers add up to 17. 15+2 and also 14+3. The question doesnt really give much of a hint about pairing, so i read it literaly, yep.. I can pick two of those numbers such that they will sum to 17. Whether I cna do it once or twice is irrelevant.

22) john will be 3 blocks from his starting point if he walks 2 blocks north, 3 blocks east and 2 blocks south
True. The north and south cancel out, leaving him where he started. Unless he is at the north pole, in which case things get really weird. He could technically end up more than 3 blocks from his starting point if he walks north towards the pole, then turns east and walks in a circle around the pole, then walks south, he will finish up where he started. Or some distance other than 3 blocks, if he started walking south 180 degrees opposite where he walked north. Specifying a city on the equator would have been a wise move for this question.

23) there are words that start with b that are the opposites of: ugly, good, exciting, worst
True.
Beautiful, Bad, Boring, Best

24) the word "revolver" reads exectly the sasme back to front
False. the OL in the middle means that this is not a palindrome

25) the lettes in "flops" are in alphabetical order
True. FghijkLmnOPqrS

26)the numbers 649302 are read backwards as 203649
False. The 649 doesnt reverse. 649302 backwards is 203946, which, by some amazing coincidence is the pin number for my cash card, and to pick an easy one to remember for my online banking, I used the same pin but backwards (and that's why this question was a doddle).
I think i should go change my pins now.

27) the daughter of peters grandfather can be the sister of peter's son
False. Well, no, actually, it could be true, but given that the daughter of peter's grandfather is more likely to be Peter's mother or aunt, Peter would have to have a child with his grandmother for the child to be the sister of the generation older than Peter and I'd like to think that things like that dont actually happen, I said false to this.

28) without breaking or twisting any match sticks you can write the word FIT with exactly 5 sticks
False. The F would require 3, the I would require 1 and the T would require 2, making 6 sticks. I got this wrong when I first played. Oops.

29) this sentence has exactly thirty eight letters
False. It has forty letters. Actually all sentences in english only use 26 letters, but the sentence didnt say the word "distinct" so in the oracle sense of the word.. ;)

30) a square with 10 inch sides can always fit within a circle of raduis 10 incehs with the points of the square lying on the circle
False. From pythagoras we know that a square of side 10 would have a diagonal of length ROOT(200). To diagonally span a circle of radius 10, this would have to have a length of 20, or ROOT(400). A square of sides 10 fits within a circle of radius 10, but does not touch in any place

31) a hexagon can be separated into 6 identical triangles by two lines
False. I cut a pizza up in my mind, and really couldnt get 6 slices out of 2 straight cuts

32) the number 62 is th next logical number in the series 2, 6, 14, 30
True. The difference in each number is 2^N+1 where N is the numerical index of the term. Basically the difference goes 4, 8, 16, 32.. And 30+32 = 62
33) john is taller than peter and tom is shorter than john. that means peter is the tallest
False. Peter cannot be the tallest because the first predicate is that john is taller than peter.

34) the sum of all odd numbers between zero and twelve is also an odd number
False. There are six odd numbers between 0 and 12. Because six is an even number, six odd numbers added will always be an even number. The only way to realise an odd number from a sum, is where the sum contains an odd number of odd numbers! :)

35) if six people form a group, and every one of them says hi to all the other members, that would mean the word hi would be said 36 times
False. For the word Hi to be said 36 times, each person would also need to say Hi to themselves. As it stands, each person must greet five others. 6 people * 5 greetings is 30 greetings

36) three identical circles can overlap so as to form exactly seven different zones
True. I'm sure youve seen the primary, secondary and white diagram in computing. The red, green and blue circles overlap to give the secondary cyan, magenta and yellow, with white in the middle where all 3 overlap. I mentioned 7 colours




Did anyone notice the deliberate mistake in the answers list? :)
 
well 7 is incorrect as you're not looking at a person but a reflection, effectively a picture, so it touches it's left ear, not it's right. I think 5 is wrong because a left hand glove is still a left hand glove no matter what you do with it or which hand you wear it on. "A rose by any other name..." ;)
 
well 7 is incorrect as you're not looking at a person but a reflection, effectively a picture, so it touches it's left ear, not it's right.
If you captured the image you see in a mirror when you touch your left ear, and printed it out, and hung it on the wall, then asked someone "is the man in the picture touching his left or his right ear", I reckon they would say "his right ear"
They might say "he is touching the ear that appears on the left hand side of the picture" but its kinda out of the spirit of the question



I think 5 is wrong because a left hand glove is still a left hand glove no matter what you do with it or which hand you wear it on. "A rose by any other name..." ;)
I wondered about that too..


Ammmmmbiguities
 
to be fair, some of the questions were badly phrased as there could be several possible answers depending on how you interpret certain words...
 
7) if peter looks at a mirror and touches his left ear, his mirror image will touch its right ear

False, the image is of a person and the imaged person would touch it's left ear
 
to be fair, some of the questions were badly phrased as there could be several possible answers depending on how you interpret certain words...


This is the universal failing of IQ tests.

But here is the ultimate question: What is intellegence?
 
Intellegence: is it related to illeterecy? :D
 
Touché my friend.

:eek::D
 
smartarse :) lol!

As for what is intelligence, that is a question still unanswered by science believe it or not. The best explanation I've come across was in the NewScientist magazine (www.newscientist.com) that broke down intelligence into social, musical, spatial and other kinds of intelligence.

Personally speaking, I would follow that idea up with saying that it's how well/fast someone can learn. It is not knowledge and every IQ test cannot ever be completely accurate as they depend on the user being able to read for a start. Literacy is a learned skill, not intelligence. An intelligent but illiterate person would be unable to score well in the test or even take it for example. Likewise, dialects and language can cause a bias in the scores. If an American were to take an IQ test in both American English and British English, they would score more badly in the British English version as the meaning of some words would be slightly different for some of the questions. The logic tests are particularly susceptible to this. Likewise, you couldn't take a test in a language you were not familiar with and even if you were, your score would depend more on your knowledge of the language, not your intelligence.

So what is intelligence? It's complicated
 
Personally speaking, I would follow that idea up with saying that it's how well/fast someone can learn.

Interesting, but is that intellIgence ;) or is it memory?

I've tended to think along the lines of the ability to apply prior knowledge of one situation to another successfully.
 
"intelligence" is the correct spelling - check ;) :p lol

As for memory, well no because if someone is learning something new, then they have no prior knowledge of what is being learned, ergo, no memory. That said, there is almost always some parallel that you can draw upon when learning something but I think you get the general idea :) Applying prior knowledge is one kind of intelligence but I'd take it further in that applying something previous to a problem in a new or simple but effective way is a sign of intelligence. Not just solving a problem but solving it elegantly.
 
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