An IQ Test

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1 The word "smart" can be created using five letters from the word "barnstorm".
True
False

2 The digits 08232569 are the same as 96523208 read backwards.
True
False

3 If a tree branch can hold three people and John weighs twice as much as Adam, and Rachel weighs half as much as Adam, then Rachel, John and Adam can all sit together on the tree branch safely.
True
False

4 There are 7 letters between K and R in the alphabet.
True
False

5 The number 25 is the next logical number in the following sequence of numbers: 5, 7, 10, 14, 19.
True
False

6 The product of 8 x 3 x 3 x 2 is less than the product of 18 x 16.
True
False

7 If you multiply any two of the following numbers together, your result will be odd: 9, 11, 3, 7, 17.
True
False

8 If the word SAW is written above the word COW and the word TOO is written above SAW, then the word TOW is formed diagonally.
True
False

9 If read backwards, the phrase "now live" answers the question: "In the battle between good and evil, who was victorious?"
True
False

10 The following sentence includes all six vowels, appearing in reverse alphabetical order: "Why run from fire ants?"
True
False

11 If all Boogles are Battuns, and some Battuns are Trandles, all Trandles must be Boogles.
True
False

12 Your starting and ending points will be just an inch apart if you draw a line seven inches left, three inches up, two inches right, four inches down and five inches right.
True
False

13 By removing two letters from the word "scout", a word that is the opposite of "in" can be formed.
True
False

14 By taking the second letter of each word from the following sentence, you can spell the word "thinking": "At the time, interesting Ukrainians visited Andy's igloo."
True
False

15 Walter is taller than Scott, and Scott's little brother is taller than Roger. Since Walter is not the tallest one of the four, then Scott's little brother must be tallest.
True
False

16 Five horses, two people, three dogs and seven chickens have a total of fifty-two legs.
True
False

17 If "boffing" is understood to mean "shot" then the following sentence is correct: "The young freshman from Kentucky took a desperate boffing, but he was unable to boffing over the star defender."
True
False

18 The sum of all numbers from 8 to 18 is an even number.
True
False

19 A group of 5 people must contain either 3 mutual friends or 3 mutual strangers.
True
False

20 Fold your hands, starting with your left thumb over your right thumb. If you start counting your digits at your thumbs, your sixth digit will be your right hand's middle finger.
True
False

21 By removing two letters from the word "planets", a word that is the opposite of "uproot" can be formed.
True
False

22 The number 8336749476338 is the same number whether it is read forwards or backwards.
True
False

23 Walter's grandmother's daughter could be Walter's son's grandmother.
True
False

24 If the second day of the month is a Friday, then the twelfth day of the month is a Tuesday.
True
False

25 By removing seven letters from the word "strengthen", the word "rent" can be formed.
True
False

26 If you break a twenty dollar bill into fourteen dollars worth of quarters and the rest into dimes, you will have more quarters than dimes. (Dollar = 100 cents; quarter = 25 cents; dime = 10 cents)
True
False

27 If Borbs are better than Fribs, and Luns are worse than Jirts, Luns must be better than Fribs if Luns are better than Borbs.
True
False

28 Using six toothpicks you can create four equilateral triangles (where each triangle's side is the length of a toothpick).
True
False

29 For a sentence with such fine phrasing, there are five instances of the sixth letter from the alphabet here.
True
False

30 The sixth to last letter in the alphabet makes just one appearance in this short but active sentence.
True
False

31 A new millennium began on January 1, 2001, but the 21st century began on January 1, 2000.
True
False

32 If the color red was created by combining purple and yellow, and the color blue was created by combining green and purple, then orange could be created by combining yellow and green.
True
False

[GaryMrMets]

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Boost Your Memory
By Vicki Haddock
Reviewed By Dr. Gary Vogin

For as long as house designer Mary Dulude can remember, she's been forgetful. Getting organized was as elusive as nailing Jell-O to a bulletin board.

She would arrive for a client meeting without the necessary paperwork. Walk away from a restaurant oblivious that she'd left her purse dangling over her chair. Lock herself out of the house not once, not twice, but five consecutive times.

Then there were those dreaded trips to the supermarket. She'd either neglect to make a list or lose it, and frantically roam the aisles unable to recall what she needed.

"My memory problems tended to revolve around errands," says Dulude, 57. "I felt just like those pictures you see after an airline crash -- I was treading water in the ocean, and all the things I needed to remember were like debris floating around me."

Then Dulude encountered Memory 101, a service at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, a teaching hospital affiliated with Harvard Medical School. There, researchers custom-make solutions to maximize memory for people of all ages. Their key tool? An 8-by-10 memory notebook in which clients can carefully write everything they need to do each day, the amount of time it will take, and even post pictures and details about friends and grandchildren.

The seemingly simple technique has attracted some big-time attention -- it was featured in the summer 2000 issue of the Journal of Geriatric Psychiatry. And while there's no proof yet that memory notebooks help everybody, studies have shown they can relieve forgetfulness in patients recovering from severe head injuries.

"We were seeing people who had memory deficits and feelings of incompetence, and we had nobody to refer them to, no way of really helping them," said clinical neuropsychologist Cheryl Weinstein, PhD, who helped develop the program several years ago.

Since then, the program has worked with patients who have learning disorders, head injuries, dementia, bipolar disorder, or the garden-variety absentmindedness that often comes with older age. Its potential benefits are huge: Some 80% of people older than 35 complain they have lost some of their ability to remember things and to concentrate, according to a 1997 survey by the company Bruskin/Goldring Research. Given that the average American leads a life more frenetic than a pinball game, both the program's directors and its patients agree that Memory 101's techniques could be helpful to virtually everyone.

"Have you noticed that our society expects the woman of the family to be the glue that holds everyone's schedule together?" asks Dulude, a mother of two who was just diagnosed with attention deficit disorder. "I was extremely bad at that. I needed some glue just to hold myself together!"

To begin, Memory 101 specialists do an exhaustive workup and interview -- even collecting old school records if possible -- and administer a battery of tests to pinpoint where memory function jumps the tracks. Deep within our brains, memories are sorted in a section of the brain called the hippocampus, which acts as a gatekeeper, deciding whether data is significant enough to pass into long-term memory. Important memories are filed away in the cerebral cortex, the outer layer of the brain where a vine-like thicket of billions of nerve cells communicate via electrical and chemical impulses to retain information. Less important thoughts -- a chore you have to do today but will never think of again -- are filed into working memory, used, and then jettisoned.

Researchers believe that sometimes memories fail because the information never gets properly encoded by the hippocampus. Sometimes memories aren't filed properly. And sometimes the breakdown comes when the patient tries to retrieve the memory. When Memory 101 specialists nail down the problem, they have determined whether the patient suffers a true "memory disorder" -- an impairment such as that caused by Alzheimer's -- or a "memory complaint" such as forgetfulness, caused by a disorganized life.

Next, the prescribed remedy: Repeat and write it down. Memory 101's recommendations spring from a foundation of research (done at Harvard, Brown, the University of California at Los Angeles, and elsewhere) showing that repetition, reinforced by writing information down, is critical to a robust recall. For instance, a study in the July 1998 issue of Nature Neuroscience reported that teaching a skill repetitively strengthens horizontal connections in the brain's cortex, where the circuitry of long-term memory operates. Another study in the November 1999 issue of the Journal of Gerontology found that note-taking and repetition boost memory.

Neuropsychologist Winifred Sachs, EdD, co-creator of Memory 101, discovered the notebook idea after her mother suffered damaging strokes. She and her mother started a diary, of sorts, to serve as headquarters for all kinds of information about her life and her treatment -- a notebook her mother could check every day, and a place for doctors, caregivers, and relatives to swap data about her care.

"I was amazed at the difference it made for my mother,'' says Sachs. "And I've watched it help a lot of other people with different kinds of memory deficits.''

When Dulude first looked into Memory 101, she was skeptical: "I'd tried planners and calendars, but I always got impatient with them." Sachs persuaded her to try again, and so she did, constructing a "memory notebook" in a book already decorated with Renaissance paintings that appealed to her as an art aficionado. Most memory notebooks have organizing tabs, a calendar section, and an address book, but each person customizes the notebook with the help of a psychologist based on his or her own lifestyle and personality.

With Sachs' guidance, she transferred personal, medical, and miscellaneous information into the book and also used it to store the particulars she might need for the immediate future: birthdays or addresses, directions to an appointment, or instructions for programming the VCR. She began using it to plan her days hour by hour -- not merely noting, say, her doctor's appointment but boxing off the time it would take to get there, park, talk with the doctor, and return home.

"The night before, if I take five minutes to visualize my day with my book, I can prioritize in my mind," says Dulude. "It becomes like a piece of art I help create and then can see in my mind's eye all day long.''

She also learned to tighten her focus by talking aloud to herself. "Dr. Sachs taught me to ask myself as I'm going out the door, 'Do I have my coat? Yes. My gloves? Yes. Where am I putting my gloves? I'm putting them in my purse now.'

"I may be able to think of 10 things at the same time, but I certainly can't talk about 10 things at the same time. Talking forces me to slow down."

Occasionally Memory 101 specialists urge dramatic changes. One patient had a hard time remembering what he had read or heard. Yet he planned to become a social worker. "He'd picked a profession that's going to tap into his weakness,'' says Weinstein. "This kid has great visual-spatial ability. We said maybe doing physical rehab work with patients would be a better fit."

In Dulude's case, Weinstein told her she needed "structure, structure, structure" -- exactly the opposite of her work as a house designer, in which she must adapt her hours and her style to each client. Sometimes hiring a secretary or personal assistant will do the trick. But Dulude says at her age, neither a career change nor a secretary are practical.

Luckily, Memory 101's techniques seem to be working. "Before, I would flounder all week never accomplishing anything, and try to play catch-up by working odd hours and weekends," Dulude says.

"Now that I've started keeping my memory notebook, I find I can easily schedule in a couple of hours to relax and do gardening or whatever. I'm allowing myself free time for the first time. And I'm not so grouchy anymore."

Vicki Haddock is a reporter for The San Francisco Examiner who writes about health and family frequently for WebMD. She lives in Petaluma, Calif.
Originally published Oct. 9, 2000.
Updated and medically reviewed by Gary D. Vogin, MD, on Feb. 27, 2002.

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Not All Smarts Are 'Book' Smarts
By Liza Jane Maltin
WebMD Medical News Reviewed By Charlotte Grayson

Dec. 17, 2001 -- So maybe you're not much of a wiz when it comes to mathematics. And maybe you just don't have a way with words, either. Well, take heart. Those aren't the only ways to measure intelligence. According to new research, strong visuospatial ability and memory also indicate a sharp mind at work.

Visuospatial tasks are those done on your "inner sketchpad" -- skills that require you to use what Shakespeare dubbed "the mind's eye." Do you know how to fit a whole lot of luggage into the very small trunk of your car? Can you accurately envision just how the furniture will look, before you begin rearranging it? If so, you probably have strong visuospatial abilities.

The researchers, led by Akira Miyake, PhD, from the University of Colorado at Boulder, tested 167 volunteers on visuospatial problem-solving ability and on visuospatial memory -- how well they could temporarily store and recall key visuospatial information. Subjects took the tests on a computer.

In one of the problem-solving tasks, subjects were shown an image of a folded piece of paper with a hole being punched in it and were asked to identify where that hole would be if the paper were unfolded. In one of the memory tasks, subjects were shown a series of grids with dots in them. Then they were shown a blank grid and were asked to locate where the dots had been.

The study results appear in the December issue of the Journal of Experimental Psychology - General.

Miyake's team found that subjects who were good at complex visuospatial tasks were also quite good at executive function tasks such as doing several things at once, successfully managing goals and subgoals, avoiding impulsive responses, and inhibiting automatic but incorrect answers. Experts consider executive functioning to be closely linked to intelligence.

According to the researchers, the findings indicate that it's possible someone can have a low score on currently-accepted measures of intelligence such as IQ and other standardized tests and still be bright.

"Traditional IQ tests have more verbally-oriented items than visuospatial," says Miyake in a news release. "Understanding the nature of visuospatial abilities and their relationships to general intelligence or to general-purpose executive functions should contribute strongly to more fair and comprehensive tests of intelligence."

© 2001 WebMD Corporation. All rights reserved.

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Tips for a Better Memory
By Vicki Haddock
Reviewed By Dr. Gary Vogin

All of us have problems recalling a stray fact or name at times, but some of us are so disorganized and forgetful that our brains sometimes seem more like a sieve.

No need to panic. Psychologists at Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center in Boston have developed an innovative program called Memory 101 that's gaining attention from researchers around the nation. Want to turbo-charge your memory -- or least get your engine running smoothly? Here are tips from Memory 101 psychologists Cheryl Weinstein and Winifred Sachs, as well as from clinical memory programs around the country:

* Make a memory notebook. This is an 8-by-10 notebook with a calendar that will help you plan the minutiae of your life. Fill it with your to-do lists for the day, week, and month. Your notebook can become a portable filing cabinet for phone numbers, addresses, birthdays, medical information, phone messages, inspirational thoughts, bridge-playing strategies -- you name it. Carry it with you, or carry a small notepad to jot down information that you later transfer into your notebook. The act of writing something down reinforces it in your memory. And make sure to look at your notebook several times a day.
* Talk aloud to yourself. Say: "I'm walking up the stairs to get my glasses. I'm putting my parking ticket in my pocket so I can get it validated. I'm going to the store to buy milk and eggs." If a great idea strikes while you're in the shower, rehearse it out loud to help remember it. Consider carrying a tape recorder to record things you need to remember.
* Post reminder signs in your house, office, and car: "Remember to buy stamps!" "Remember to take out the garbage on Thursday!"
* Get in the habit of keeping items where you will need them -- keys by the front door, umbrella in the sleeve of your coat, eyedrops in the drawer of your nightstand, and so on. Record these locations in your memory notebook.
* Minimize distractions. Do one thing at a time. Turn off the television or radio when you're talking with someone. At a restaurant, try to face the wall so you can more easily focus on the conversation at your table.
* Bundle items from your to-do list. Examples: Always clean your glasses at the sink after you brush your teeth; always change the batteries in your home smoke detectors whenever you change the clocks for daylight-saving time.
* Use mnemonic tricks -- acronyms, rhymes, and so on. When tightening or loosening lids, remember "righty-tighty, lefty-loosey." To recall the Great Lakes, remember "HOMES" (Huron, Ontario, Michigan, Erie, Superior.)
* Slow down. Our ability to store and recall memory slows slightly with age. Ask friends, relatives, and even doctors to speak more slowly.
* Take care of your body to take care of your mind. Certain medications, poor nutrition, and even small deficiencies in sleep may interfere with memory.
* Exercise your mind. Reading, playing the piano, watching shows like The Weakest Link or Who Wants to Be a Millionaire, playing cards or chess -- all these activities help keep your brain sharp and active.
* Understand your own style of learning. Most people are visual learners, remembering best what they see. They benefit the most from memory notebooks and signs. Others are auditory learners, remembering best what they hear. They benefit from talking out loud or using a tape recorder. A few people are kinesthetic learners, remembering best what they experience. They will benefit most from writing things down or acting them out. Knowing your strength will help your memory run at peak efficiency. To enhance your memory, try using all three learning modes.

Originally published Oct. 9, 2000
Updated Nov. 21, 2001