Enigmatic Puzzle IQ Test

By William F. Bultas

This IQ test is purely for your entertainment. Take as much time as you like, possibly using more than one session, and use any reference and calculating aids you wish. If you want to accurately get a score from the chart below, though, you shouldn't get help from anyone else. In some cases, the title of the puzzle may be useful in solving the problem. Good luck, and (most importantly) have fun!


Number Correct                 IQ and Percentile
     0-1                   IQ   0 - IQ  90 / 0-25
     2-3                   IQ  90 - IQ  110/25-75
     4-5                   IQ 110 - IQ  130/75-98
      6                    IQ 130 - IQ  138/98-99
     7-8                   IQ 138 - IQ  150/99-99.9
     9-10                           IQ 150+/99.9+

QUICK FIX
1. At A&R Auto Repair Shop, 2 mechanics can repair 6 cars in 3 hours. By this same reasoning, how many mechanics will it take to repair 22 cars in 5 hours?

EBON RIDDLE OF KING PUZZLEKHAMEN
2. During his travels in Egypt, the famous explorer and adventurer Alabama Smith stumbles upon the tomb of a not so famous Pharaoh. Having heard tales of a priceless idol rumored to lie within, Smith enters the tomb. He eventually finds the idol, lying on top of the sarcophagus of King Puzzlekhamen! Letting his excitement get the better of him, Smith grabs the idol, with the terrifying result of a stone slab sliding across the only entrance (and exit, for that matter), and a heavy grating sound as the ceiling slowly descends to crush him to powder. Luckily, Smith notices 5 stone levers on a wall, each colored blue, orange, red, white, and black. Also, he sees something inscribed on the top of the sarcophagus (in English, strangely enough). It reads: "Bore were robe orb." Thinking quickly, Smith pulls each of the levers at least once in a certain sequence. The ceiling stops its descent, the slab blocking the exit retracts, and Smith hurries out with the idol to enjoy fortune and fame. What order did Smith pull the levers in to save his life?

SEQUENCE
3. A worker for the CIA (Cybernetic Information Association, of course) is translating information into a code, so that competitors who might steal the information will not be able to make use of it. The worker is currently translating a word that you can find somewhere in this problem into this code. What number completes this word: 8 22 10 6 22 13 24 ?

WARPED TIME
4. I really need to get a new watch. It correctly reads the time as 4:12PM, but 3 hours later it reads 8:00PM. Two hours after that it reads 10:32PM. What time will it read when it is actually 3:42AM?

WHOSE ON FIRST?
5. In a certain baseball game, Whose on first, Mark is on second, Amy is on third, and Bill is the pitcher. Of the following, who might be the catcher?

Tera Leo Felix Amelia Ozzie

ISTUMPUMOSTOFALL'S CHALLENGE
6. After climbing a treacherous mountain over a period of several days, the exhausted explorer, adventurer, and escape artist Alabama Smith (remember him?) enters the cave of the great mystic Istumpumostofall. "Ah, Mr. Smith, I have been waiting for you," says the mystic. "I will give you some very vital information if you can tell me what the last number should be." Following the oracle's finger, Smith sees these eight words carved into the stone floor in front of him, with a number following each word except for the last one: grain 3 sorrow 4 preach 4 needle 3 cover 3 cusp 3 lobule 3 voodoo. After rubbing his head for a few minutes, he gives an answer, and the mystic tells him something that at first angers, but later relieves him. Can you solve Istumpumostofall's puzzle?

WORD DOWN
7. One of these seventy-two words is the answer to the puzzle. It has an even number of letters, and only one vowel. This is hard! But once you see what I am up to, you will be elated. One letter in the word could be used to identify the person working on this puzzle, but from the author's perspective. Another letter could also be three other letters, if it were oriented a certain way. Good luck!

SEARCHING HIGH & LOW
8. Linda, an investigator who became famous after solving the murder of Maximillion Warbucks, has started her own private practice. She is searching the mansion of the multibillionaire Bigmoney Richman in hopes of finding some of Bigmoney's priceless diamonds that were hidden there by his disgruntled former butler. All that the butler left was a note that read "Can't help a novice detective every lighted inch! Elevation required!" It does not take Linda long at all to locate the diamonds, much to Bigmoney's pleasure. Where were they?

THE CONNECTION
For these last two problems, the words on either side of the brackets each have some connection to the word that should be in the middle. The number of dashes indicates the number of letters in the word. Example: planet (-----) ground. The answer is EARTH.

9. color (------) fruit

10. exclude (---) stripe

Answers