Mensa Quiz
The following questions are provided by the folks at American Mensa, the High IQ Society. Can you provide the answers? By Dr. Abbie F. Salny
For the answers, visit our Puzzle and Quiz Answers page.
1. Rose and Robert were buying gifts for the holidays. For Grandma and Grandpa’s present, they spent half of what they had, plus $20. Then, for their cousins’, they spent half of what was left, plus $10. For their teacher’s, they spent half of what was left, plus $1. They then spent half of what was left on cards. There was $2 left. How much did they start with? (Hint: Work backward.)
2. Some letters have been removed from the following names of world cities. Replace the letters to find out where you are.
T __ __ P __ __
S __ __ C __ __ O __ M
__ D __ __ B __ __ __ H
K __ __ __ A __ __ __ P __ __
3. A bag of coins contained $4.92 made up of the same number of pennies, nickels, dimes, and quarters. How many of each coin were there?
4. The following lines from a popular song have been put into very fancy language. Put them back into standard English. Heavenly bodies from our viewpoint are enormous and of a scintillating appearance during the period in which our brightest source of light is shaded, in the largest of our contiguous 48.
5. What two words, formed from different arrangements of the same five letters, complete the sentences below? Somebody on the ship noticed that the ________ didn’t work very hard. “No, I don’t,” he agreed, “because there is no _________ for overtime.”
6. Rearrange the letters in the following expression to form the three-word definition for this phrase.
WATER’S IN ALL THESE
7. Fill in the following square using four T’s, four E’s, three A’s, two R’s, two N’s, and one B (for a total of 16 letters) so that each word can be read across and down. (Hint: One of the words is a geographic name.)
8. The following 14 letters can be anagrammed into a four-word phrase that means “feeling really depressed.”
D D E H I M N N O P S T U W
Bonus Question: What musical era do composers Vivaldi and Handel characterize?
American Mensa Limited, known as the High IQ Society, is
an organization for individuals who have one common trait: a score in
the top two percent on any supervised standardized intelligence test.
For more information about American Mensa or to take the Mensa Home
Test, visit www.us.mensa.org/americanway or call (800) 66-MENSA.
Dr.
Abbie F. Salny was the supervisory psychologist for American Mensa and
Mensa International for more than 25 years. She is a coauthor of the
Mensa Think Smart Book. Quiz © 2008 by Dr. Abbie F. Salny and American
Mensa Limited from the Mensa Page-A-Day Calendar (Workman Publishing).
The 2008 edition of the calendar is available for sale now.