I have more book larnin’ but he’s by far the better problem-solver, so we make a good team. Plus we tend to see things from slightly different points of view, so we keep each other honest.
And frankly, had he been pushed academically as I was, he’d be scary smart. But no one in his life suggested he’d be anything other than a laborer all his life till we met and I pointed him towards engineering. He’s definitely one of the best instinctive engineers I’ve ever known.
I’ll echo what most have said here. We each have areas where we’re strongest. She runs circles around me with her musical and creative talents while I am the technical and science champion around the house. I am the organizer, planner, money handler and bookish one. She’s the artistic, go with the flow, people person.
Good thing too. I don’t think I could stand being married to someone like myself and she loves not having to worry about the bills. 
Different areas of strength. I think we’re pretty much even in terms of actual intelligence. I’ve got better grammar and much better spelling, but he’s dyslexic. He’s logical and organized and a perfectionist, I’m sloppier but I get things done faster. I’m better at multitasking.
I honestly think we’re about the same. He has the ability to retain ANYTHING, which I don’t (but which comes in handy when my mom calls on a Sunday and says “What was the 1959 Oscar winner for Best Original Song?” and expects me to know it offhand - however, it sucks because I can never quite beat him at Trivial Pursuit. However, I think I tend to be better at rational problem solving, which is why he has beaten me in exactly three Scrabble games in the 5 years we’ve been together :).
Crusoe’s much cleverer and more knowledgeable than me, but I bring other things to the relationship, like, er, lemme think - cooking skills. Yeah, that’s it. I cook.
She reads more than me and has her mind engaged by her work much more than mine, but I think I would score higher on an IQ test, and I think I understand more than she does. I guess in some ways I’m smarter, and in other ways she is. She is extremely “reactive”, meaning that she has a very hard time seeing past the immediate effects and consequences of something, and she has a much harder time seeing long-term consequences. She has a much more narrow comfort zone than most people, and she rarely moves out of it.
I guess I don’t really know how to define “smart”. If we disagree about something objective, we both have about a 50/50 chance of being correct.
I think the spouse and I are about equal, brainpower-wise. I’m “quicker” than he is (he tends to be more organized/methodical in his thought processes, whereas I’ll make wild leaps of logic that will either get me to the answer much faster than he does or leave me stranded off at some strange conclusion that has nothing to do with the problem at hand), but he probably gets the right answer a little more consistently than I do. Essentially, in areas where you have to call a piece of knowledge to mind quickly (like trivia contests or quiz shows), I’m better. In areas where you have to spend time figuring out a long convoluted problem (like logic problems and that sort of thing) he has the edge. I’m better at writing (especially fiction) than he is. He’s better at math than I am. I have a more active imagination, though when you get him going he can come up with some really cool stuff. He’s just not as into it as I am.
So yeah, I 'd say we’re pretty well matched.
I’d say I’m more culturally literate, in that I’m better versed in music, literature, art, history, etc.
But she’s smarter, especially when it comes to practical intellligence (first hand experience and how to do different things).
Book smart, he was. Common sense smart, it was totally me.
I also have more common sense.
(Asimovian
Member Join Date: Mar 2005
Posts: 2,977
Location: Southern California
Oh God, my wife, by a long shot. I mean, I know more useless trivia than she does, but in terms of sheer intellect, she’s a clear winner.
Then again, she married me, so one does have to question her ability to apply common sense. )
i am in the same boat. my brain kung fu is no match for her (albiet selective) eidetic memory. i remember details late, too late, to do any good. she loves to argue, i hate it. i love her still…
Brute force computation, analysis, and problem solving are mine hands down. I can look at something and know how to take it apart, put it back together, and why it works.
However, while that meter is pegged, the whole common sense and social skills meter is sitting on the other peg. So on the bottom line, about the same.
I’m 3[sup]rd[/sup] Year Aeronautical Engineering student, she’s a 3[sup]rd[/sup] year Vet Med student, both getting good grades (these exams pending). I think her degree is probably the hardest at our University, and she’s certainly smarter than me in that respect. She works much harder than me and has to know a whole lot more to be able to succeed in what she does.
I have to be able to do more with my subject, though, and I’ve got a very engineer-ey/math-sey brain, and can solve problems, but also understand enough Chemistry and Biology to not get hideously lost when she talks about what she does (I’m aware she probably dumbs it down for me, though), whereeas my coursework gives her nightmares.
So in short; she’s the smartest girl I know at what she does, which is the hardest subject I can think of, and she works very hard. I’ve got a wider range of knowledge but get by at what I do by being good at maths.
In every non-academic sense of ‘smarter’, however, she slays me. And often doesn’t let me forget.
My husband much smarter than I am, to the degree that I am actually flattered that he considers me intelligent.
It is not that I think that I am stupid. To the contrary, I consider myself to be above average in many ways. But I am in absolute awe of his intellect.
By any objective measure, my wife is clearly smarter. Better grades in high school, better grades in college and two graduate degrees (to my one stinking Bachelor’s). She’s also profoundly better in basic math.
The only area I can beat her in is the ability to take a complex issue, strip it down to its essential element and recast it. While she’s caught up not just counting, but cataloging all the trees, I’m the one who can see that if we keep walking this direction in the forest, we’ll fall into the river.
Book smarts and IQ, me.
Common sense and knowing how to get along in the world, her by a mile.
I am smarter than Mrs. Mercotan.
She is wiser than I am.
For example, she’d never respond to a thread like this.
Analytically, he is more intelligent.
Creatively, I am more intelligent.
I am more obviously intelligent, and by ‘‘obviously’’ I mean I have an exceptional short term memory therefore I test better, I communicate more eloquently and tend to know a little bit about a lot of topics, so I find my intelligence more easy to demonstrate socially. I’m the sort of person who can miss over a month of class and skim the reading the night before, and still get a good grade. I am a creative, philosophical, artistic, multidisciplinary, expansive, procrastinating wreck. I can write a novel or give a stirring presentation on surrealist art during the Spanish Civil War, but I struggle with subtraction in my head.
My husband on the other hand often unwittingly creates new, nonsensical combinations of words (he once uttered the non-word ‘‘natureship’’ in serious conversation) and does silly things like pronounce ‘‘tarot’’ to rhyme with ‘‘carrot,’’ so the first impression of his intellect isn’t always the best. However, if you talk to him a bit about any of his areas of expertise, you will understand how sharp he really is beneath all that sputtering and head-scratching. He has astonishing ability in the realm of psychology. He works incredibly hard at everything he does and is very regimented and systematic, never missing a day of work or a day of school. His ability to perform organizational tasks and to assess risk and make decisions dwarfs my own by a long shot. He makes color-coded Excel spreadsheets that track everything from movies he’s watched to hours he’s spent studying. He’s also a Ph.D student, and I can’t (yet) claim that honor, but I’ll be damned if I’m going to admit he’s smarter than me! :mad: 
He’s worlds smarter than I am, I’m delightfully quick-witted and better socially than he is.
My fiance by far. He is smarter and has better analytical skills, logic, and common sense.