Are you up for a quick and clever test to gauge your intelligence? Welcome aboard the Cognitive Reflection Test (CRT), known as the world’s shortest IQ test 🧠.
Despite being just three questions long, don’t be deceived by its seeming simplicity. This crafty little quiz is designed to assess your ability to discern when a problem is more complex than it first appears 🤔.
The faster you figure it out, the higher your intelligence might be!
Let’s dive in, shall we? Here are your three brain-teasers 🕹:
- A bat 🏏 and a ball ⚾ cost £1.10 in total. The bat costs £1.00 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
- If it takes five machines 🏭 five minutes to make five widgets, how long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
- 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 the lake?
Most people guess:
- 10 pence 💰
- 100 minutes ⏰
- 24 days 🗓
Unfortunately, those answers would be incorrect. Drumroll 🥁, please! Here are the correct answers:
1. The ball costs 5 pence.
Here’s how: If the ball costs X, and the bat costs £1 more, then it will be:
X (ball) + £1 (extra for bat) = Bat’s cost.
So, Bat+ball=X + (X+1) =1.1
Therefore, 2X+1=1.1, and 2X=0.1
Solving for X gives us X= 0.05 (or 5 pence) 💡💰.
2. 100 machines would take 5 minutes to make 100 widgets.
Since five machines make five widgets in five minutes, logically, one machine will take five minutes to make one widget. So, if we have 100 machines working simultaneously, they will make 100 widgets in five minutes ⏰⚙️.
3. It would take 47 days for the patch to cover half the lake.
If the patch doubles every day, it would logically be half the size the previous day. So, one day before it covers the whole lake (on day 48), the lake would be half-covered 🍀🏞.
It’s worth noting that, despite its apparent simplicity, not everyone passes this test with flying colors. In a survey of nearly 3,500 people, 33% got all three questions wrong, and a staggering 83% missed at least one.
Even at the prestigious MIT, only 48% of students sampled were able to nail all three questions. Though the test is short and does not measure all aspects of intelligence, it certainly offers a challenging way to quickly assess one’s problem-solving skills.
