# "IQ measures how good you are at taking IQ tests" **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [August 11, 2010, 11:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997 "2010-08-11T23:44:41Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 3
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 4:44pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/41 "2010-08-12T16:44:26Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > Kinda like crossword puzzles. First you’re struggling with everything… then you get better at it, you start to recognize the familiar words… and eventually you start to work from a sort of meta-solving base, where you recognize which of the usual suspects is responsible for creating today’s crossword and you start filling it out without looking at the hints because you know what words the guy (or girl) likes to use. You see that double s in the middle of a word and you know they have a propensity for using “demission”. > > …which is why I stopped doing the crossword on my morning papers, it’s just no fun anymore. You need to do more interesting crossword puzzles. Modern ones deal with wordplay, not just obscure words, and you should give cryptics a try. I am good at crossword puzzles because I have an excellent verbal memory, and so can pull up words very easily. You of course get better with time, but it is not correlated with time. My dear departed mother-in-law did puzzles for more years than I was alive, but still was nowhere as good as me. So crosswords measure a very specific skill. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 4:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/42 "2010-08-12T16:53:57Z")
> [@snoopygal](#): > > Jane’s company would be full of people who were impossible to manage. So, MIT professors are impossible to manage? I worked at Bell Labs for quite a while, and for 10 years as a manager, and had no problems. If the style of a manager is to treat reports as moronic children, then there would be a problem, but it isn’t the fault of the employees. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:01pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/43 "2010-08-12T17:01:29Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > Well, of course Jane will hire a better staff, on average, than Bob IF all other variables are exactly equal and that isn’t likely to happen. Clearly Jane’s group are better at something, whatever an IQ test measures. I would be willing to bet that if Bob hires the best dressed and groomed applicants and Jane hires the worst dressed and groomed, then Bob’s company will easily beat Jane’s. So I am claiming that the way a person dresses for an interview is a better indicator of business success that any IQ test. Depends on the job. Sales, no doubt. But above a certain minimal level, we here in Silicon Valley don’t hire on the quality of your suits. Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun, said “the purpose of a tie is to keep soup off your buttons.” I think he did pretty well for himself. I could walk through the entire Noyce building at Intel and see a couple of suits - and they’d be visiting salesmen. Success there has nothing to do with dress. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:04pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/44 "2010-08-12T17:04:11Z")
As far as sales jobs go, assuming roughly equal people skills, would you buy from a person who when asked about how their product solves a problem you have more or less reads from marketing material and says he will get back to you, or one who suggests a clever solution, and understands your problem well enough so you know that when she discusses it with the tech guys will get it right? ---
**Author:** ![The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/ce73a5/32.png) [@The\_Bith\_Shuffle](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/The_Bith_Shuffle)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:07pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/45 "2010-08-12T17:07:49Z")
Jane’s company would _absolutely_ do better. IQ tests _do_, for the most part, measure how smart you are. They are all rather well-correlated with each other and they all assess mental functioning in fairly straightforward ways. And the “some people are better at test-taking than others” thing is mostly irrelevant as well, because test-taking skill is largely rooted in intelligence. ---
**Author:** ![TriPolar](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tripolar/32/3008_2.png) [@TriPolar](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/TriPolar)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/46 "2010-08-12T17:10:24Z")
> [@Ruminator](#): > > Hmmm… I don’t think so. > > I’ve done tons of research in this area of IQ test performance improvement. There is absolutely no training program or test taking technique I know of that will teach people with average IQ (100) to attain scores of 150 or 200. I don’t think anybody claims that test scores can be raised by 50-100 points. [QUOTE=Voyager;12794417I am good at crossword puzzles because I have an excellent verbal memory, and so can pull up words very easily. You of course get better with time, but it is not correlated with time. My dear departed mother-in-law did puzzles for more years than I was alive, but still was nowhere as good as me. So crosswords measure a very specific skill.[/QUOTE] And IQ tests measure a set of specific skills that can’t be shown to equate with an overall measure of intelligence. The IQ proponents fail to provide a coherent definition of intelligence aside from circular reasoning that intelligence is a high IQ score. I do crosswords daily, and my most common technique is get a word based on the clue, then find all connecting words based on possible letter combinations and backtracking to the clue. I know others who rely primarily on the clues. There is more than one way to skin a cat, and crossword proficiency and high IQ scores don’t indicate the methodology used. ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:33pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/47 "2010-08-12T17:33:21Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > > [@Ruminator](#): > > > > Hmmm… I don’t think so. > > > > I’ve done tons of research in this area of IQ test performance improvement. There is absolutely no training program or test taking technique I know of that will teach people with average IQ (100) to attain scores of 150 or 200. > > I don’t think anybody claims that test scores can be raised by 50-100 points. I realize that but I why can’t it be a valid benchmark? We are constantly reminded of the incredible plasticity of the brain, and some also claim that the IQ test can be “coached.” This criticism is part of the ammunition that IQ tests are worthless. Ok, proof to me of the above points would be a clear recipe that shows how to gain 50 to 100 points. Why not? ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:51pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/48 "2010-08-12T17:51:25Z")
> [@Sage\_Rat](#): > > > [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > > > Minesweeper is certainly not an IQ test, and the same will be true for any game you choose to select. But rather than continue to beat my head against rank ignorance, I’ll simply ask you to provide some evidence for “training to improve IQ scores.” That will be moer useful to illustrating your point than thought experiments about Windows games and IQ. > > I searched on Google Scholar, and there weren’t any papers about the topic one way or the other ([though I did find this](http://www.americanscientist.org/issues/feature/rising-scores-on-intelligence-tests/9)). So again, unless you can say why an IQ test question isn’t a type of puzzle, what happens with puzzles should be applicable. I very much appreciate that you actually took the effort to look at the actual literature on the topic. You know what? I’ll go ahead and buy into the hypothesis that if you administered the WAIS to someone, and then you them the test materials, and told them what all the vocabulary words meant, and told them what the answers were to the comprehension and similarities subscales, and let them practice digit span. block design and digit symbol, they would be able to achieve a greater score when the test was administered the second time. My problem with your analogy is that the Minesweeper would be just one subscale, and that in practice, the test materials are well-guarded, and as you alluded to, the typical person will not be administered the test at all, let alone more than once and only very rarely multiple times in a short span. You know what - I wouldn’t be surprised if you did see maybe a few points improvement if you did administer the test in short succession to someone. Nevertheless, my point would remain that the typical IQ test administration is not something that you can teach to and which wouldn’t be invalidated due to some kind of practice or exposure effect. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 5:52pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/49 "2010-08-12T17:52:29Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > You might not expect that people would completely ignore that information and continue to spitball bullshit about how there’s no substantiation for any claims about the relationship between IQ and other outcomes. You’d be surprised. You clearly have issues with people making general statements about “IQ tests”, fair enough. Maybe if you used the actual name of a test, or set of tests, we could distinguish what you are talking about from the many, many, many test that claim to measure intelligence. Not that that would satisfy the question in the OP but it would make your point clearer. There have been a lot of IQ tests over the years making a whole lot of extraordinary claims. What claims am I spitballing bullshit about? The claim that we can correlate race and IQ? The claim that work ability and IQ are related? Maybe there are nuggets of gold to be found in the study of IQ but it’s buried in a mountain of crap. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/50 "2010-08-12T18:02:54Z")
> [@TriPolar](#): > > > [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > > > 1. IQ is very, very stable over the life span. > > Nonsense, I can take IQ tests repeatedly and produce widely varying scores. You will say that I would be deliberately skewing the results to prove a point. But that proves my point. You have no idea what factors other than intelligence contribute to a person’s score. This is like trying to measure average driving speeds by posting a police officer with a radar gun at roadside. The average will be considerably lower than actuallity because people slow down when they see the police officer. > In a related point, I don’t have the facts here, but motivation would be a factor, and it seems that IQ testing avoids using motivational factors. If there are studies that show motivation does not affect IQ scores, please let me know. Gee, we have your supposition that IQ scores are not stable, versus many, many empirical studies. See, the thing is, when you conduct a study of the stability of IQ, you don’t just use one person. That helps to reduce the effects of individual differences, like motivation and intentionally screwing with the assessment. So, when a large number of researchers examining data from an even larger number of people find consistent results that IQ measured at one time point very reliably allows you to predict IQ at another time point, you kind of get more confidence of the stability of IQ over time than one guy on the internet supposing that he could intentionally perform poorer in order to prove his point. But go ahead and keep surmising and supposing. It’s just as good as empirical testing. > [@](#): > > I don’t have the details, but I’ve seen several references to memory training being used to increase IQ scores. Feel free to refute this. Gee, how about you support your assertion regarding IQ scores instead. That would be a novelty. > [@](#): > > This is interesting, because solving word problems seems to be a major factor in the academic performance that IQ proponents claim to measure. If you could show an actual decoupling of IQ tests and ‘word problems’ you might have some evidence of IQ as an independent measurement of intelligence. What point are you trying to make? > [@](#): > > Narrow and wide are relative terms. Out of the possible ways that intelligence may be measured, IQ tests measure within a narrow range. Weighing 1 million grains of sand may sound like a large sample, but the number of grains of sand on the makes 1 million an insignificant number. What point are you trying to make? [/quote] I’ve never seen IQ tests strongly correlated to anything except academic performance and income. And income is strongly tied to academic performance. In addition, correlation does necessitate a cause and effect. [/quote] You cannot have looked, then. Try looking first, and then thinking, and then speaking. It’s most handy. Or just continue to spitball blindly about what you think is true. Be sure to continue to preface everything you say with “Well, I don’t have the facts, but…” or “I don’t have the details, but…” Why let little things like facts and details stop you from proclaiming the invalidity of IQ? > [@](#): > > This is contrary to all the other evidence that shows job performance is related to motivation, reward, group dynamics, and numerous factors which have no bearing on intelligence or IQ scores. I think you are making this one up entirely, or relying on fallacious evidence. The vast majority of jobs in the world have few requirements for intellectual capacity at all, and as stated in previous posts, intelligence can hinder job performance. Please link to _any_ of the “other evidence” that you refer to. > [@](#): > > Please, on the subject of IQ, engage your intellect, educate yourself, and fight ignorance. Physician, heal thyself. [/QUOTE] See, that’s the problem here. I do know the literature and history of IQ testing. I know many of the tests. I know how to administer and score them. I know their utility and their limitations. If I were to “heal myself” in the manner you seem to be suggesting, I would have to unlearn all of the “facts” and “details.” Perhaps I would feel more blissful then. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/51 "2010-08-12T18:06:03Z")
> [@MrDibble](#): > > > [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > > > Jesus wept. Hentor bashed his forehead into his monitor. > > Bash away. Doesn’t change the evidence that the IQ-creativity “correlation” doesn’t persist past 120. Skewed Pear and all that… You don’t seem to get that you undermine your point. If there is no relationship between IQ and creativity, then you are equally likely to find creative people with low IQ and creative people with high IQ, by definition. Thus, opting for the high IQ group will give you an equal number of people who are creative in comparison to the low IQ group, but they’ll all be smarter, too. ---
**Author:** ![shiftless](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/e9c0ed/32.png) [@shiftless](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/shiftless)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:06pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/52 "2010-08-12T18:06:14Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > > [@shiftless](#): > > > > Well, of course Jane will hire a better staff, on average, than Bob IF all other variables are exactly equal and that isn’t likely to happen. Clearly Jane’s group are better at something, whatever an IQ test measures. I would be willing to bet that if Bob hires the best dressed and groomed applicants and Jane hires the worst dressed and groomed, then Bob’s company will easily beat Jane’s. So I am claiming that the way a person dresses for an interview is a better indicator of business success that any IQ test. > > Depends on the job. Sales, no doubt. But above a certain minimal level, we here in Silicon Valley don’t hire on the quality of your suits. Scott McNealy, former CEO of Sun, said “the purpose of a tie is to keep soup off your buttons.” I think he did pretty well for himself. > > I could walk through the entire Noyce building at Intel and see a couple of suits - and they’d be visiting salesmen. Success there has nothing to do with dress. I’m pretty sure you aren’t claiming that hiring in Silicon Valley is done strictly via IQ tests, the topic at hand. You can claim that Silicon Valley jobs are based on intelligence in a general sort of way, sure. If your going to assume that all successful people must have high IQs then whatever company in the OP does the best must then have the high IQs. Success itself is the best IQ test in that case. I also pretty sure that, all other things being exactly equal, you folks in Silicon Valley don’t automatically hire the worst dressed interviewees because they must be the smartest. ---
**Author:** ![MaxTheVool](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/9fc29f/32.png) [@MaxTheVool](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/MaxTheVool)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:10pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/53 "2010-08-12T18:10:01Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > I’m pretty sure you aren’t claiming that hiring in Silicon Valley is done strictly via IQ tests, the topic at hand. You can claim that Silicon Valley jobs are based on intelligence in a general sort of way, sure. If your going to assume that all successful people must have high IQs then whatever company in the OP does the best must then have the high IQs. Success itself is the best IQ test in that case. > > I also pretty sure that, all other things being exactly equal, you folks in Silicon Valley don’t automatically hire the worst dressed interviewees because they must be the smartest. Boy do I have no idea what point you’re trying to make. ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/54 "2010-08-12T18:15:02Z")
> [@shiftless](#): > > > [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > > > You might not expect that people would completely ignore that information and continue to spitball bullshit about how there’s no substantiation for any claims about the relationship between IQ and other outcomes. You’d be surprised. > > You clearly have issues with people making general statements about “IQ tests”, fair enough. Maybe if you used the actual name of a test, or set of tests, we could distinguish what you are talking about from the many, many, many test that claim to measure intelligence. Not that that would satisfy the question in the OP but it would make your point clearer. > > There have been a lot of IQ tests over the years making a whole lot of extraordinary claims. What claims am I spitballing bullshit about? The claim that we can correlate race and IQ? The claim that work ability and IQ are related? Maybe there are nuggets of gold to be found in the study of IQ but it’s buried in a mountain of crap. You’re protesting your ignorance on the subject because you attend to the whole range of nonsense? Isn’t that a bit like saying that medicine is an invalid discipline because homeopathy or chirology exist? I think I’ve made very clear that I’m not talking about Facebook’s IQ test, but about standard IQ measures. I have in fact even listed them. In several threads I’ve provided evidence from the literature. It makes no fucking difference, because in about a month, I can almost guarantee that I’ll read a post from you saying “You’d think that people making wild claims about IQ would ever back up those claims with some evidence!!!” ---
**Author:** ![Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/h/8edcca/32.png) [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Hentor_the_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:29pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/55 "2010-08-12T18:29:36Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > Isn’t that a bit like saying that medicine is an invalid discipline because homeopathy or chirology exist? Note that I was intending to write “homeopathy or chelation therapy or chiropractics exist”, not chirology. ---
**Author:** ![Malthus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/m/85f322/32.png) [@Malthus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Malthus)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:34pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/56 "2010-08-12T18:34:21Z")
How analogous to IQ testing are standardized competence tests such as the LSAT? I remember much similar discussion about how one could not train for the LSAT because it measures pure ability - this is directly contrary to my personal experience. Certain simple tricks that you could teach a monkey to do (or, at least, an undergraduate 😃 ), can significantly improve LSAT scores - for example, simple question - pacing discipline. If, on the contrary, the LSAT is not comparable to IQ tests, and IQ tests are _better_ measures of actual ability than tests such as the LSAT in that they cannot be ‘gamed’, why are IQ tests not used instead? ---
**Author:** ![GHO57](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/g/df788c/32.png) [@GHO57](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/GHO57)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:35pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/57 "2010-08-12T18:35:55Z")
> [@Voyager](#): > > You need to do more interesting crossword puzzles. Modern ones deal with wordplay, not just obscure words, and you should give cryptics a try. > > I am good at crossword puzzles because I have an excellent verbal memory, and so can pull up words very easily. You of course get better with time, but it is not correlated with time. My dear departed mother-in-law did puzzles for more years than I was alive, but still was nowhere as good as me. So crosswords measure a very specific skill. Been there, done that… cryptics, ciphers, swedish style grids… I tend to learn the tricks fairly quickly. I might have to look for some English language ones to see if they keep better. Oh right… I’m finnish. > [@Ruminator](#): > > > [@GHO57](#): > > > > Same thing with IQ tests, you learn to recognize patterns. > > Hmmm… I don’t think so. > > I’ve done tons of research in this area of IQ test performance improvement. There is absolutely no training program or test taking technique I know of that will teach people with average IQ (100) to attain scores of 150 or 200. > > I’m not going so far to say it’s impossible but such a methodology doesn’t exist today. I’m not totally doom and gloom because I’m holding out hope that one of my multimedia products can boost IQ scores and the insights can be fed back into neuroscientists work but I have to be realistic that it may fail. Oh, do tell… what kind of research? Where can I read it? …also would you happen to know where I could find a 100-type person… it might be interesting to see if they could be improved upon.😃 ---
**Author:** ![Ruminator](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/b9bd4f/32.png) [@Ruminator](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruminator)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 6:42pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/58 "2010-08-12T18:42:38Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > Oh, do tell… what kind of research? Where can I read it? I’m working on a “hardware-assisted” type of method for boosting IQ. It was my own research into what others have done with IQ performance that guided what I did. It’s not something for publication. I did want to know ahead of time if I was inadvertently trying to build a “perpetual motion machine.” If others had done exactly what I had in mind and it didn’t work, I knew not to waste time on it. I found nothing in the literature so I proceeded. The sliver of hope that even keeps me working on this at all is the “brain plasticity” mantra. ---
**Author:** ![Sage\_Rat](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/sage_rat/32/399_2.png) [@Sage\_Rat](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Sage_Rat)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:15pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/59 "2010-08-12T19:15:49Z")
> [@Hentor\_the\_Barbarian](#): > > My problem with your analogy is that the Minesweeper would be just one subscale, and that in practice, the test materials are well-guarded, and as you alluded to, the typical person will not be administered the test at all, let alone more than once and only very rarely multiple times in a short span. > > You know what - I wouldn’t be surprised if you did see maybe a few points improvement if you did administer the test in short succession to someone. > > Nevertheless, my point would remain that the typical IQ test administration is not something that you can teach to and which wouldn’t be invalidated due to some kind of practice or exposure effect. Unless you live in a place like Japan where that sort of teaching to the test occurs fairly commonly. While I would trust that people, in Japan, who scored higher had on average a higher real IQ than people who scored lower, I wouldn’t trust that the national average of testing higher was because Japanese people were smarter. Rather, it’s likely that before taking IQ tests, the kids took classes that went over IQ test puzzle variants that had been used through the years and taught techniques for doing them fast and accurately. ---
**Author:** ![Voyager](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/voyager/32/133_2.png) [@Voyager](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Voyager)\ **Post date:** [August 12, 2010, 7:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997/60 "2010-08-12T19:30:03Z")
> [@GHO57](#): > > Been there, done that… cryptics, ciphers, swedish style grids… I tend to learn the tricks fairly quickly. I might have to look for some English language ones to see if they keep better. Oh right… I’m finnish. I’ve done one or two Spanish puzzles, but the grids for Romance languages are different because of the letter distribution. This type of grid appears in some American puzzles, but only on baby ones in specialized magazines. Are there Finnish cryptics? [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997.md?page=2) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/iq-measures-how-good-you-are-at-taking-iq-tests/549997.md?page=4)