Ready to prove you're secretly a genius?
The world's shortest IQ test is spreading around online right now. It's only three questions long . . . but only 17% of people get all of them right. That means 83% of people fail.
Here are the three questions:
1. A bat and ball cost $1.10 total. The bat costs $1 more than the ball. How much does the ball cost?
2. It takes five machines five minutes to make five widgets. How long would it take 100 machines to make 100 widgets?
3. There's a patch of lily pads in a lake. Every day, the patch doubles in size. If it takes 48 days for the patch to cover the entire lake, how long will it take to cover half of the lake?
And the answers . . .
1. The common wrong answer is 10 cents. The right answer is 5 cents.
Say the ball costs X. Then the bat costs $1 more, so it is X + 1. So we have bat + ball = X + (X + 1) = 1.1 because together they cost $1.10. This means 2X + 1 = 1.1, then 2X = 0.1, so X = 0.05. This means the ball costs 5 cents and the bat costs $1.05
2. The common wrong answer is 100 minutes. The right answer is 5 minutes.
If it takes 5 machines 5 minutes to make 5 widgets, then it takes 1 machine 5 minutes to make 1 widget (each machine is making a widget in 5 minutes). If we have 100 machines working together, then each can make a widget in 5 minutes. So there will be 100 widgets in 5 minutes.
3. The common wrong answer is 24 days. The right answer is 47 days.
Every day FORWARD the patch doubles in size. So every day BACKWARDS means the patch halves in size. So on day 47 the lake is half full.
So what's the verdict? You smart or what?