I picked up an old book from the 1960s entitled Know Your Own I.Q., by H.J. Eysenck. That should have been my first clue. But I have never taken an I.Q. test before, and I was curious, so I decided to know my own I.Q.
I'm afraid to say that I skipped a lot of the dense explanation at the beginning. I read and skimmed enough to know that, according to the very British author, I.Q. test results are a bit difficult to quantify, he isn't a rabid fan of deducing much about a person based on an I.Q. number, and psychology is not really a science. As a recovered psychologist wannabe, I agree. But I was still curious about the tests.
The rules were that I had to take only one test per day and someone else had to time me, 30 minutes per test. During that 30 minutes, I would answer as many of the 40 questions as I could. My I.Q. could be found by using a graph to plot the number of correct answers against I.Q. scores, averaging the scores of the eight tests to get my final I.Q. score. Interestingly, the graphs only went up as high as 32 correct answers. That made me feel a tiny bit better later on. A tiny bit.
Instead of finding someone with a stopwatch, I used my laptop to set a 30 minute timer. But I cheated by taking Test One and Test Two in quick succession the first day. Test One was so frustrating that I had to know if I really was that stupid. On Test Two, I was now familiar with the types of puzzles I had to solve, but still felt like my brain was wimping out on me big time. The puzzles start easier and get harder to solve the farther you go in the test, but I could still answer certain types of puzzles closer to the end of the test. Others were beyond me even in the lower numbers. Ironically, it was the word puzzles that made me the most frustrated, but that was probably because in some of them, I couldn't discern any specific patterns. ByTest Three, I realized that I'm just going to have to accept myself for who I am.
Take this one, for instance, which is number 28 from Test Eight:
Insert the word missing from the brackets.
policeman (Mars) nurse
solicitor (_ _ _ _) barrister
I can tell you in three seconds that the answer is "tote." I hope you are very, very impressed.
I'll give you three seconds to be very, very impressed before I tell you how easy it is to deduce based on the fact that I have already solved several of these types of puzzles. The key is to find the pattern by which letters are chosen from the first word and second word to make up the word in parentheses. In this case, the m and a for Mars come from the m and a in policeman. The letters follow each other in order, and they are the third and second to last in the word. The r and s in Mars are the third and second to last letters in nurse. By keeping with the same pattern, you know that the first two letters of the mystery word are t and o from solicitor, and the last two letters are t and e from barrister. Tote. All of these types of puzzles have an easily solved pattern.
But then there is a question like this (number 34 from Test Eight):
Underline which one of the words in the bottom line below belongs with the top three.
LAND NIGHT WATER
weather grace pit book serpent
Oh. My. Gosh. So easy, right? Yeah, well don't be impressed with me in this case because I still couldn't get this one until I looked up the answer at the end of the book. It's obvious, of course, but not until I read the explanation. I have not solved even one of these puzzles correctly in any of the tests because I get really tired of trying to figure it out and end up skipping it.
If you figured out that the word from the bottom row that belongs with the words from the top row is pit, I give you my hearty congratulations. For the rest of us non-geniuses, I'll give you the solution: land, night, and water can prefix the word fall, as can pit. None of the other words on the bottom row can prefix the word fall. See? Obvious. Now don't you feel dumb? Is it terrible to hope that you didn't get that one, or that it at least took you a couple minutes to solve? If we ever run into each other at the grocery store or airport and you solved it easily, please don't rub it in my face. Thanks.
Okay, let's do math. Here's one I got right in Test Three. It's question 38.
I was supposed to meet my girl friend at noon every Sunday. The first time she came at 12.30, and the next time at 1.20, then at 2.30, then at 4.00. When did she turn up the time after that?
I'll let you solve this one, because if I can solve it, I know you can.*
Here's one I didn't solve, though I solved others like it. It's number 34 from Test Three. The top and bottom numbers are paired together visually in the book (8 and 3, 5 and 10, 12 and 7, and 9 and ?), and that is a clue to solving the puzzle.
Insert the missing number.*
8 5 12 9
3 10 7 ?
Anyway, that's all fine and good, me taking I.Q. tests and finding out I am of very average intelligence, right smack dab in the middle of the bell curve and whatnot, but what's the really important thing here? The really important thing here is that I couldn't care less where I score on these tests. I was just thrilled when I was able to figure out the solutions to some of the questions. I also got better at some types of puzzles as I went along. Seems to me that stretching my brain and learning to think in a new way can only make me smarter somehow. Or less prone to dementia in old age. I'll take either one.
Now why did I walk into this room?
*You want the answers, don't you, just to see if you're right. I completely understand, and I am compassionate in that regard. The answer to the time question is 5.50. The intervals between the times the girl friend showed up begin with odd numbers, starting with 3. So Girl Friend, who is obviously high maintenance, is late 30 minutes, then 30 + 50 minutes, then 30 + 50 + 70 minutes, then 30 + 50 + 70 + 90 minutes, and finally, 30 + 50 + 70 + 90 + 110 minutes from 12 noon. Has she no regard for other people? Why did this person show up after the second time she was so late?
In the next puzzle, the missing number is 14. You'll facepalm when I tell you why, which is exactly what I did. There are two series going on here, one odd and one even. 3, 5, 7, and 9 zig-zag between bottom and top rows. 8, 10, and 12 are even numbers in a zig-zag pattern, meaning that the missing number is the next even number after 12, which is 14. Aren't you glad you aren't being graded? I still give you an A+ for reading this far.
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