I’ve decided to revisit the Lost Column Archives with this reprise of a 1987 column I wrote about Mensa. Enjoy.

Mensa Bumblers

Why would anyone join a club where people brag about their intelligence? This has to be the most irritating and boring group of people imaginable.

And, of course, I’m talking about Mensa, the most famous club of smarties. The funny thing is, now I’m not so sure that they’re smart

Well, at least that’s the impression I get when I see a Mensa mini-test in a recent issue of Cosmo.

Cosmopolitan, this month, had one of those “”theme” features where it discusses all aspects of intelligence. In one of the sidebars there was a mention of Mensa and a sampler of a Mensa smartness test. Let’s take it.

There are five questions. They are:

1) Unscramble the following word: HCPRAATEU

2) What number is one half of one quarter of one tenth of 400?

3) The same three-letter word can be placed in front of the following words to make a new word: LIGHT, BREAK, TIME.

4) Pear is to apple as potato is to…(a) banana (b) radish (c) strawberry (d) peach (e) lettuce

5) If two typists can type two pages in two minutes, how many typists will it take to type eighteen pages in six minutes?

You’ll be astonished at the bogus answers given by Mensa. They got four out of five wrong. I couldn’t believe it. Their answers were as follows: 1) PARACHUTE, 2) five, 3) DAY, 4) b. both grow in the ground, and 5) six.

How could these people be so mistaken? And they purport to be geniuses. Give me a break. The correct answers are:

1) A trick question with no answer. HCPRAATEU is not a word. The question says that it is. If they asked you to “”make a word from the following scrambled letters” then it would spell parachute. That’s not what they said.

2) This question is so easy it’s dumb. Take a calculator and put in .5 X .25 X .1 X 400 and you get 5. A ten year old could do it. Big deal. Is this the mathematical prowess needed to join Mensa?

3) Add the word DAY to these words and you get NO “”new” words. You get a bunch of old words that date back to the 16th century. What’s so “”new” about the word DAYBREAK, for example? The real answer is “”BUD.” You get BUDLIGHT, BUDBREAK, and BUDTIME. All are “”new” words.

4) The answer is lettuce. Both a potato and a lettuce make salads. While a potato and a radish both grow in the dirt they are both served differently. Since all the references are to food, one must assume food aspects. Therefore, where something grows has nothing to do with it. Otherwise the word “”gopher” would be picked if listed. Obviously, the correct answer is lettuce.

5) Another trick question. The answer as to how many typists does it take to type doesn’t exist. It’s a variable. It depends on how long they chat with each other, who is the supervisor, and whether they get a break during the job. Six typists (the MENSA answer) may take forever.

So MENSA gets four out of five wrong on its own test. I sure don’t want to have anything to do with a group that gives these naive and fallacious answers to sometimes complex questions.

–end

Column © 1987 by John C. Dvorak. This column first appeared in the San Francisco Examiner on Sept. 15, 1987.