The contest ran for several months and according to the sponsor: “We had 51,930 people take our Test for Exceptional Intelligence during the contest. Within that we had 1,780 people from 34 different countries enter the contest and submit their answers.”

OK... so it’s kind of cool to win, and kind of humorous (based on the absurdity of the title) at the same time. The contest itself was a lot of fun, and if you like solving puzzles and “brain teasers” you should check out the links below. Some of these problems are tough! If you want to see all 25 problems, go to the Test for Exceptional Intelligence at the High IQ Society’s web site.

Selected Problems

Here are a few of the problems from the test. I’ve included my (subjective) measure of the problem difficulty as well: 1/10 = like candy from a baby and 10/10 = brain hemorrhage.

• Problem #9 - Decipher the Cryptogram - (difficulty: 9/10)
• Problem #16 - Slice the Donut - (difficulty: 4/10)
• Problem #24 - Conditional Probability - (difficulty: 3/10)

Media and Other Contest Info

• The final scores
• The initial article, from the Ann Arbor News (a similar article was printed in the Seattle Times).
• A short radio interview from National Public Radio’s Todd Mundt Show