How to Solve Some Logical Reasoning IQ Test Puzzles

Last week we discovered two things: that very few students in our real-life club have had a formal IQ test; and that many students enjoy doing puzzles. So, putting these together we shall start our quest to find the best IQ tests online and treat them as puzzles to solve, understand and then make our own.

Each blog post will look at one online IQ test. They are not in any order of preference yet, but at the end I shall list the best ones.

This week, we shall look at IQ-TEST.com (Certified by The High IQ Society).



Now, the free test at IQ-TEST.com is very short, with only 12 questions to be done within 5 minutes. It's good practice for the longer tests and you do get an IQ score at the end, even though it is only a broad estimate.

However, if you click on the "more IQ tests" button, there are some interesting tests with logical and spatial puzzles. Today, I just wish to focus on the logical reasoning puzzles.

The logical reasoning IQ test questions are all about sequences of shapes. It starts off with fairly simple sequences such as AABBAABB... and so on. I shall use letters just to make it easier and faster to type!

The interesting questions start when we see two overlapping sequences. For example, let's take the simple sequence ABCABCABC... This has a repeating cycle of 3 letters, so we can call it a 3-cycle. Now, let's add to this a 2-cycle of bold/normal to get ABCABCABC... Notice that the whole sequence restarts after 6 letters, which comes from overlapping the 3-cycle and 2-cycle sequences.

Try this:

A B C A B C A B C A B C A B C _

Describe the next letter in the sequence.

Now, go back and try the logical reasoning IQ test again. Do you find it easier now?

Try to make your own sequences. You can either make them with shapes or, like I did, use letters. You can use a variety of effects, such as upper and lower-case letters, bold and italics as well as anything else you may find on your keyboard!

Here's one last example to try:

A A B A B C A B C __ A B C D E A B ...

Describe the missing letter in the sequence.

Have fun!