As easily as possible, it doesn’t take an eternity to separate the Einsteins of the world from the rest of us. Three questions which have been designed as the World’s Shortest IQ Test should do it in less than 10 minutes.
The Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT) was designed by psychologist Shane Frederick in 2005 with the aim of testing your ability to think slower and rationally rather than rushing with your gut feeling.
It wants to see how you will be able to ignore your system 1 thinking which is the intuition and settle for analytical thinking which is the system 2. While very easy to pass, it is easier to fail because of how quick you may attempt to answer.
If you are a genius, you will be able to answer all three questions, but the faster you are able to answer, the higher your IQ is.
Before you start, don’t beat yourself if you fail, because even students from top universities of the world including Harvard and Yale have failed to get the answer correctly. As much as 83 percent of them failed out rightly.
Want to show them how it’s done?
The World’s Shortest IQ Test
1. A bat and a ball cost $1.10 in total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2. If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. In a lake, there is a patch of lily pads. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long would it take for the patch to cover half of the lake?
Done thinking?
Ride down for the answers!
The answer to the World’s Shortest IQ Test
1. 5 cents – You probably guessed 10 cents. The answer is actually a little less – a 5 cent ball plus a bat costing $1.05 will set you back $1.10. And, of course, $1.05 is exactly $1 more expensive than 5 cents. (A Princeton study found that people who responded 10 cents were “significantly” less patient than those who got the right answer.)
2. 5 minutes – Your gut instinct probably went with 100 minutes. Fortunately, it wouldn’t take quite so long. From the question, we can determine it takes exactly 5 minutes for 1 widget machine to make 1 widget. Therefore, it would take 5 minutes to make 100 widgets from 100 widget machines.
3. 47 days – You might have guessed 24 days. It seems intuitive to half the number of days because you’re halving the size of the lilypad patch. But if the area of the lake covered in lilypads doubles every day, it would only take one day for it to go from being half covered to fully covered. Take one day away from 48 days and you’re left with 47.
