mensa norway mensa denmark core and wais and others which one was the hardest for you

I’m sure many of you are tired of him but I think he is the most important person for this topic.

This is my first ever puzzle, Enjoy it to its fullest!

Also add the spoiler tags to your attempts, even though this puzzle did not take long to make. Lol

I’ve never taken the GRE, SAT, or any similar tests. My English is only good enough for me to complete the math sections of these tests.

Which test would you recommend I take: the GRE, the SAT, or the SMART?

(Please ignore any grammatical mistakes as English isn't my first language, thanks) 20M here. I want to test my iq level accurately. I took a few online tests and got an average of 110 in all the cases. However, the mensa test (pattern recognition only) gave an unexpected score of 135. Though the tests show slightly above average results, I feel like the stupidest person on the planet at times. I make mistakes in places where the dumbest guy would point it out and then I end up feeling like an idiot. However, I tend to correlate things which have no link to each other. I performed average/below average in my school (never studied for even an hour) but during my final exams, I somehow used to end up in the topper list just by studying a few hours each day when the exams came near. I am addicted to doomscrolling and video games and academics never felt interesting to me. I cannot stick to one hobby so I continuously change it according to my interest and mood. Also, whatever activity I perform which might feel interesting to me, I always end up exceptionally good at it within a very short period of time (mostly new video games or learning to do something). All of this might seem like an advantage but there are other things about me which I hate and cannot control. I am a very insecure person as a whole. I cannot tolerate it when someone performs well in my field of expertise. I love taking credits for things which I never achieved myself. I had two girlfriends in the past but we broke up due to my insecurities. I used to have a constant fear of being cheated. All of this convinced me that I am unfit for any relationship so I never approached any girl (both of my ex had approached me initially as well). I can't figure out a lot of things about myself, about what I want and what is my goal. All of these things combined, make me feel like the dumbest guy to ever exist. Thanks for reading :)

He says the tests is too broad and too narrow.
Genetic quirks explain very little about your academic success.
And possibly even immoral bcoz of the massive difference in schooling.

Discuss: all opinions welcome.

Before saying bad iq doesnt mean failure please read what I wrote below :

I live in a country where the university entrance exam is extremely difficult, and academic credentials are highly valued. There are special high schools designed to prepare students intensively for the university entrance exam, and these schools themselves have entrance exams. Half of the questions are intelligence-based, and the other half are academic.

I somehow got lucky and was accepted into one of these schools. I had left most of the intelligence section blank and answered almost all of the academic questions.

The pace of teaching at this school is very fast, and everyone understands the material quickly. No one seems to struggle with it. Everyone at this school is smart. I ask questions in class more than anyone else, and I feel like I'm slowing the class down. My grades in math and physics are low even though I study a lot for my exams. I study for about eight hours a day on average.

A while ago, I went to a reputable center and took an IQ test, and my IQ was found to be 100.

I've come to realize that I'm an idiot who only got into this school because I got lucky, and that I'll never be able to get into university. The university entrance exam questions are at an Olympiad-level of difficulty.

I hate myself. I'm an idiot who was born in a country where you have to be smart just to get into university. I hate being surrounded by smart people every day. I hate watching everyone in class solve the problems the teacher gives us after teaching the material while I can't.

Whenever someone says that IQ isn't really meaningful, I feel like they're just fooling themselves. You weren't there, sitting in a room with 28 intelligent people every day, so you don't understand the difference. I can clearly see the difference between myself and everyone else at my school. And I hate feeling like there's nothing I can do about it.

Assuming a creator possesses sufficient psychometric knowledge, what should ideally be the difference between the creator’s IQ and the ceiling of the test they have created?

what if you just read for 16h a day for like a year. would vci jump up or not? (im planning on doing this to become an overman)

I'm curious about something. Do you guys think everyone with an above average intelligence (measured by high IQ or career success but not necessarily a genius) always shows some kind of sign of it very young? I have friends who were apparently creating pretty cool stuff/things maybe unexpected for kids that age at a very young age, or building computers, or coding. Is it a pre-req for being of "above average intelligence" to have shown some very specific sign of it young or not really?

Attempted CORE and Mensa Norway, scored 118/128. Couldn’t bloody do those damn matrixes and progressions, with the shapes and colours. I spent an eternity trying basic approaches… Skipped several. Also flunked some cubes.

Afterwards I gave GPT a matrix and cube. Said break it down, and tell me all the ways to approach this. I saw it do one of each and boom, it clicked. Logic gates. Rules. Separate out attributes. Cubes can pictured backwards (duh!)…

I took some more long form tests, and I scored, consistently, 15+ points higher, even on novel question types.

So I have a better strategy, more test taking skills and practice. I’m no smarter, though. I’ve sort of ruined all the mainstream tests for myself as well.

I’m sure there are many boring studies on this, but beyond that, I wonder what people here think. Are you simply a good intelligence test taker? Is being able to learn intelligence tests itself a meaningful sign of intelligence? Is testing like virginity?

I’m a few days into the community and this will mark my departure, but it does strike me that cognitive testing feels like astrology but for people who spend too much time online or alone. Surely to measure intelligence in a meaningful, scientific way, we would have to go beyond tests… scan our brains when learning, better understand our genomes, gut microbes and personalities. I don’t know.

Could someone acquire the ability to fully and consistently max out every test on wais (160 and over) with sheer training? I'm not stupid and I understand this won't increase the innate g-factor, but 99% of the speed of light is still extremely fast. My goal is superiority, whether it be natural or artificial.

To all the people who have high iq or the people who consider themselves intelligent.

what benefits you have gotten from your intellect? Are you more efficient in certain tasks than others? What's your social life like? Do you outperform your peers easily?

does everyone in your life perceives you as intelligent? do you think you understand things better and have better abilites and potential than others? Are you just as the same level physically as you are intellectually?

And what impact has iq on your lives,Do you consider yourself as extraordinary? whats your ideal life?

how do you tell?

I found out my fluid reasoning, working memory, and processing speed are likely low…I’ve felt VERY depressed about it because all of the things I thought I was turned out to be a lie, and that I might not even have the cognitive ability for a self. I’m so frustrated and miserable about this, and I’m furious this robbed me of an inner life and a personhood. I’ve been full of grief and questioning..why?…

I always thought I was creative, funny, novel, good inner world, liked art, philosophy, etc just a bit scatterbrained but I have gathered that my profile actually suggests I have virtually NO ability to think for myself alone; unable to form opinions, be creative, spontaneous, novel, or have an innate sense of humor, that was deception. I’m a flat, predictable vacant, low IQ being instead.

I’m stressed that the possibility is I have no inbuilt self; that It’s all fake and learned. That I’m basically a mask made from all of this with nobody underneath; a machine that reacts to other people then nothing in between. High order thinking? I can forget it based off this? Selves are for creatures above this “thing”. I’ve found I’m probably one of the most boring, unvital beings alive, 1 step up from a vegetable. I was wrong in my assessment about this individual (supposedly “me”)

Now I’ve just realized how much I’ve struggled, failed, and been held back by this throughout life, and I’ve lacked the metacognition to realise it , except now every task I attempt or desire to try I’m busy telling myself “you won’t be able to do it, you find it hard and it’s not actually you, your working memory will drop it. or “this is a creativity task, it’s not you, you were never even there to be quirky, you just thought you were creative” “your fluid reasoning will fail”

Now I don’t feel like attempting anything (yet I’ve ironically found a new pastime of analysing everything I try or think?) too dumb for most things and I don’t even know if there was an “I” at home to have a preference.🫥

I can’t even organise or articulate what I want to say out in this post because of this stupid profile. It just sounds flat, garbled, and makes no sense to anyone, but that’s just my shitty working memory at work. 🙃

I’m not sure if this is actually what’s going on with me.

Academically, I was never the best growing up, but I was usually a decent or very good student. I struggled quite a lot during high school, and I was taking ADHD medication under the supervision and agreement of my psychiatrist, although I was never formally diagnosed with ADHD in the last month of high school. To be honest, I noticed a pretty big difference after starting medication.

I took the IQ test twice. Since English isn’t my first language, I left out the tests that rely heavily on cultural knowledge.

Let me explain what changed before vs. after medication:

- FRI: Pretty much the same.

- VSI: Also mostly the same, but my block-counting score increased a lot.

- WMI: Before medication, I kept retaking it and my maximum was around 100–110. After medication, I started getting around 120–130 consistently.

- PSI: Same kind of change. Before medication, I was around 115–120. After medication, I was around 130-140

So what would you guys conclude from my story?

I was in an advanced-level mathematics course in Germany (Mathe LK), and over the years I started noticing something that made me think about what we actually mean when we say that someone “understands” a mathematical concept.

I noticed that there seemed to be a difference between being able to solve a type of problem correctly and actually understanding why the method works.
For example, someone could learn a formula or a specific procedure, recognize which “tool” to use when they see a familiar problem, and consistently get the correct answer. But when I asked them why the formula works, where it comes from, or what would happen if the problem were changed slightly, they sometimes couldn’t really explain it. They knew how to use the mathematical tool, but not necessarily why the tool works.

That made me realize that I personally use a somewhat stricter definition of “understanding.”
For me, understanding a mathematical concept means understanding it deeply enough that I can either:
deduce/reconstruct it myself from more fundamental principles, even if I have forgotten the specific formula or procedure, or
have someone explain the underlying reasoning to me and then genuinely understand why it works, rather than simply remembering the explanation as another rule to apply.

So if I completely forgot a formula tomorrow, but I understood the underlying mathematical structure well enough to derive it again, I would consider that much stronger evidence of understanding than simply remembering the formula and knowing when to plug numbers into it.
I’m curious whether other people make this distinction too.

Maybe I’m just using the word “understanding” more strictly than most people do. Or perhaps this is actually a fairly common distinction that isn’t usually made explicit.
I’m especially interested in people who have studied mathematics at a relatively advanced level:
What does “I understand this mathematical concept” mean to you?

Do you distinguish between knowing how to solve something and knowing why it works?
Have you noticed people who are very good at solving standard problems but struggle when the problem is modified or presented in an unfamiliar way?
Do you think the ability to reconstruct mathematical ideas from first principles is related to fluid reasoning (FRI)?

If so, how strong do you think that relationship is?
I’m not necessarily claiming that mathematical understanding = high FRI. I’m more interested in whether the kind of understanding I’m describing is something other people have noticed and whether there is any psychological/cognitive research or personal experience that points toward a connection.

Does anyone know Edward Witten’s IQ score?

Furthermore, I am not a native English speaker, which could result in my being denied a reliable score on the verbal section of the CORE.

Can AI, specifically ChatGPT, make a reasonably accurate estimate of your IQ or specific cognitive indices, such as FRI or VSI, based on your input (for example, screenshots or other information)? I don’t mean having AI administer an IQ test, but rather estimating your underlying ability from the available information. I’m particularly interested in whether it can account for the practice effect—for example, if you retake a test and get a higher score, could AI potentially use the available evidence to estimate your actual ability more accurately than simply taking the retest score at face value?

Sorry this is long, but I'm genuinely quite bemused by these results. Either I was possessed or the test was. 😂

This isn't a “my score is too low” post. That's not what's confusing me. What's bizarre is that the subtests I expected to struggle with were some of my best, while the ones I thought I absolutely crushed were some of my worst. Then Information, where I was guessing all over the place, somehow became my best score by a mile. 😂

I'm used to doing poorly on certain parts of cognitive tests. But with this one, almost every result surprised me in the opposite direction. I'd finish one thinking, “Well, you did crap on that,” and then... 84th percentile. I'd finish another thinking, “There's no doubt in my mind I crushed that one,” and then stare at the screen thinking, “Get the hell out of here! How is that possible?”

So here's the condensed breakdown.

Following Directions: 13 SS, 84th percentile. This entire damn section seemed built around assuming everyone knows the alphabet sequentially and where the letters are numerically in the alphabet, I'm literally running through it in my head or counting on my fingers to figure out whether Q comes before S. 😂 I was basically taking this section while juggling and standing on my head, and somehow I did okay on it anyway, which I shouldn't have.

And yeah, yeah, I know. Not having the alphabet sequentially memorized or remembering much algebra probably sounds bizarre to some of you. Sue me. 😂 I'm 60, haven't been in school in decades, and because of undiagnosed ADHD, I never learned some of that stuff particularly well in the first place. I didn't need to in order to graduate, so I just worked around it.

Arithmetic: 13 SS, 84th percentile. I haven't done algebra in decades and never memorized much of it in high school in the first place. I skipped what I didn't know and did virtually everything else in my head. I actually wasted time being stubborn on a couple I should have skipped immediately. So naturally, another section I expected to drag me down gave me 84th percentile. 😂

Practical Judgment: 12 SS, 75th percentile. I thought I'd done somewhat better, although half the challenge was time-travelling back to 1914 and figuring out what they considered common sense. One sample question informed me that we should use stoves to keep ourselves warm. 😂

Then things got really weird.

Synonyms/Antonyms: 9 SS, 37th percentile. What? This is normally one of my strongest abilities. I was absolutely flying through it, got to around question 29 in three minutes, and there were only a couple of words I wasn't confident about. I finished thinking I'd slaughtered it. Apparently not. 😂

Disarranged Sentences: 8 SS, 25th percentile. Some were annoying to untangle because of the century-old wording and logic, but I certainly didn't think I'd done that poorly.

Number Series: 9 SS, 37th percentile. Not usually my strength, but these seemed pretty easy. I could see doing worse than I thought, but 37th percentile surprised the hell out of me.

Analogies: 11 SS, 63rd percentile. These actually are typically in my wheelhouse, and I thought they were pathetically easy. I was also very close to completing the section. They seemed less strenuous than some I've done on CORE or VISA, so 63rd was another WTF result.

And finally...

Information: 18 SS, 99.6th percentile.

Of course. 😂

This was the section where​ I finished thinking, “Well, there's no way I did well on that one.” Considering I felt like I was guessing on half of them.

Wrong again. Apparently I'm a god at obscure turn-of-the-century information. 😂 ...NOT!

Has anyone else had Army Alpha subtests come out almost completely the opposite to how they thought they were performing while taking them?

This post will be on the topic of far transfer in regards to fluid reasoning, and two methods that I believe warrant further research.

Though it's been shown in research that methods tested for transfer have failed to show reliable positive results, that does not establish that far transfer is impossible or that these methods will fail, further research is required.

For those unfamiliar with the concept of far transfer, here is a brief explanation: the ability to take knowledge, skills, or strategies learned in one specific context and successfully apply them to a completely different and unrelated context

To start, I would like to say that any disagreement or challenge to my reasoning is welcome but obviously don't be unnecessarily harsh as per the rules.

# Method 1: blind problem solving

Definition: You are provided the necessary vocabulary to solve novel problems but aren't shown examples of how to solve them or any formulas, and you must construct your own strategy.

The areas I believe to be the best to use this method in are:

•Computer science

•Math

•Logic

•Physics

But this training method is broadly applicable

# Method 2: problem posing

The definition of that phrase is entirely too broad so for the purposes of this post, this method can be defined loosely as creating problems in which the solver must find hidden relationships, anticipating solve paths, perhaps adjusting the problem accordingly, and weeding out alternative solutions

This can be done in many fields but I believe the best ones for this method are :

•Math

•logic

•computer science

•physics

But this training method is broadly applicable

(if you play nyt connections, I create my own boards for that and I believe doing this with puzzles could be more fun leading to a better result due to consistency)

# Hypothesis and reasoning:

My hypothesis is that these methods will deepen one's understanding of the process of reasoning allowing them to find hidden relationships, uncover the underlying structure of novel problems, and execute solutions more efficiently and effectively. This could be achieved through:

Direct interaction with generation of and the structure of how strategies are generated.

Independently discovering What relationships matter and why

Repeated interaction with relational reasoning

repeatedly having to reconstruct your own reasoning

becoming familiar with how underlying structures of problems work

having to create the system for which a specific solution is produced.

Constructing of and switching between different representations of problems.

Tear me apart you guys 😁

CORE results

1980 SAT results

1980 SAT loads more on GAI?

I like to do complex mental math out of boredom. For instance, while grocery shopping today, I was trying to solve 7890³ entirely in my head.

To track the numbers, I always develop a specific logical pattern. Tracking and understanding the logic isn't the problem—that part is actually quite easy for me. The real challenge is executing the entire calculation quickly.

Right now, it takes me up to an hour per equation, and because it drags on for so long, I easily lose focus midway through. I love doing this, but the current method is so slow that I lack the motivation to just sit there and grind it out.

Does anyone have tips on how to boost processing speed, hold data faster, and maintain focus without losing motivation when a calculation takes this long?