Official Mensa® Challenge – June 2025

Are you ready for Mensa?

Think you’re the smartest person in the room? Prove it. Each month, we feature a fresh batch of brain-bending puzzles from American Mensa — the high-IQ society known for separating the curious from the truly clever. From tricky word games to number logic, these five questions will test your wit, patience and maybe even your ego. No Googling allowed.

Questions

1. The following simple substitution cryptogram, in the form of a rhyme, can be easily solved.

     18-15-19-5-19    1-18-5    18-5-4

     22-9-15-12-5-20-19    1-18-5  2-12-21-5.

     20-8-9-19    3-18-25-16-20-15-7-18-1-3

     23-1-19    4-5-19-9-7-14-5-4    6-15-18    25-15-21.

2. In the school lunchroom, one table and half a table ate a pizza and a half in a minute and a half. At the same rate, how many pizzas could two tables of hungry children eat in three minutes?

3. A line from a song from a famous movie is given in fancy language below. Put it back into usual phraseology.

There is a remote location beyond an arc of a spectrum of colors. In this location, the ethereal atmosphere is cerulean.

4. What two words, formed from different arrangements of the same seven letters, can be used to complete the sentence below?

Harriet tried to write a history of her father’s infantry __________, but it turned out to be so long that she had to ________ the whole middle section.

5. Tom is one-fourth Denise’s age. In three more years, he’ll be half as old as Denise is now. In five years, he’ll be two-thirds Denise’s age now. Neither one is a teenager yet. How old are Tom and Denise now?

Answers

1. Roses are red, violets are blue. This cryptogram was designed for you. (Code: A = 1, B = 2, C = 3, etc.) 

2. Four pizzas (Each table eats a pizza in a minute and a half, so the cafeteria manager will need four pizzas.)

3. Somewhere over the rainbow, skies are blue.

4. brigade, abridge 

5. Tom is 3; Denise 12.

Just for LocalLife readers: Take the Mensa Practice Test for just $5! Visit americanmensa.org/mht and use offer code: Local21. Quiz © 2018 Dr. Abbie F. Salny

Mensa provides official tests and answers to LOCAL Life as part of an exclusive license agreement.