World’s shortest IQ test measures whether you’re smarter than 80% of humanity

The world's shortest IQ test shouldn't take up too much of your time and if you can get all of the questions right then you might just be a certified smarty-pants.

TikToker @chibimallo posted the IQ test which was made by MIT professor Shane Frederick and is dubbed the Cognitive Reflection Test.

At just three questions long it should be the sort of test you could have done and dusted very quickly.

Apparently it's 'the quickest IQ test on Earth', and if you get all the questions right you're 'smarter than 80 percent of humanity'.

Psychologist Frederick put 3,428 people through the trio of questions over a 26 month period.

Out of all those people only 17 percent got all three questions right and 33 percent got all three wrong.

So it sounds like a pretty tricky quiz, reckon you could crack it?

Here are the questions:

Pixabay

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 five machines five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. In a lake there's 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?

We should probably say that before you go submitting that Mensa application, getting these questions wrong doesn't make you stupid, they're just three questions and IQ tests aren't the defining barrier for intelligence.

These questions were designed to 'yield impulsive erroneous responses' where your brain would alight on what sounds like the right answer before you can go 'hang on' and realise you've jumped to the wrong conclusion.

Now it's time for the answers, and we really hope you didn't just scroll down to check these before giving the questions a go.

Wikimedia Commons

For the first brain teaser the answer is that the ball costs five cents, meaning that the bat costing a dollar extra makes it $1.05 and combined they'd set you back $1.10.

If you got that one right you can award yourself a biscuit to enjoy at your leisure, and perhaps give yourself another one if you managed to get the right answer to question two.

That aforementioned right answer is of course five minutes, because if it takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets then one machine makes a widget in five minutes, so 100 of them all going at the same time will have the job done in five minutes.

Finally, the patch of lily pads which doubles in size every day and eventually covers the entire lake on day 48 could cover half of it on day 47.

That last day of doubling in size takes it from half a lake's worth of coverage to full, so don't fall into the trap of thinking the answer is 24 days.

Did you get all of those right? We hope so, and if you did that apparently means you're smart so well done for that.

Topics: Weird, quizzes, Viral

Joe Harker

Joe graduated from the University of Salford with a degree in Journalism and worked for Reach before joining the LADbible Group. When not writing he enjoys the nerdier things in life like painting wargaming miniatures and chatting with other nerds on the internet. He's also spent a few years coaching fencing. Contact him via [email protected]

@MrJoeHarker