site banner

Friday Fun Thread for April 18, 2025

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

1
Jump in the discussion.

No email address required.

Did it while a little distracted, went away to shower and do other things, did try to concentrate for the timed tasks, also I took this near midnight so might be a little sleepy

  • Full scale: 140
  • Memory: 138 (VM 76/85, EM 21/26)
  • Verbal: 135 (V 30/34, A 16/27)
  • Spatial: 141 (MR 17/17, CP 14/18)

I'm surprised my memory and spatial is that high, and that my verbal is that low — historically formal IQ tests have pinned me as having significantly higher verbal IQ. I will blame it on English being a second language of mine (even if I am fluent), but I'm not sure it explains the disparity between the synonym-matching and the unscrambling-words tasks. I was barely able to get any of the 5-letter words unscrambled. (For reference the previous LSAT thing that was floating around a while ago (?) was easy as shit in comparison, 5/5 no sweat — was the LSAT supposed to be a good proxy of verbal IQ?)

The shape-rotation is super easy, as all of the the shapes are a bent line on a plane with another bit sticking out — the only thing needed is to identify once you orient yourself towards the part sticking out (for example, I just assumed it was facing myself), what shape should the remaining squiggle be. This would have been more difficult for me under time pressure, but most of the shapes were fairly self-explanatory I felt.

Probably could've gotten a bit higher on the CP puzzles if I didn't rush and actually reasoned my way through some of these but then I suppose it's fairly pointless if you actually idk do it? Was I supposed to run purely on intuition on this?

Why so many excuses and humblebrags from someone who got a great score?

I actually think that it was probably a bit inaccurate and it might have overestimated my spatial/nonverbal IQ (as I thought the spatial elements could be gamed a bit too easily), but most of the soul-searching is due to being quite perplexed at my lower verbal score. Previous estimations/tests of my verbal IQ returned a score, like, >10 points above my nonverbal IQ.

I think 135 is really good for verbal if English is your second language so I'm impressed personally. I did the same technique with the shape rotation that you described (identify the one plane then the other sticking out part.) I honestly already forget what the CP part of the test was so I can't comment on your questions at the end

English is my second language but I did start learning it very early, and often it feels more like a co-first language for me, so it still feels a bit off. I'm wondering if the poor ability in matching letters is due to spending quite a lot of time with logographic scripts as well esp. early on in life, so maybe on some level I treat words in alphabetical languages like independent glyphs?

I think the test-makers are a bit too optimistic if they think more time wouldn't help with the shape rotation portion; a monkey could do it given enough time and if it discovers a reliable method.

The CP puzzles were the guess where the midpoint of all the dots are puzzle