Official Mensa® Challenge – May 2024

American Mensa is where brilliance belongs – it’s where friendships are forged for life, business connections and opportunities are made, and where brilliant minds find the chance to engage with others in an intellectually stimulating environment.

Just for LOCAL Life readers: Take the Mensa Practice Test for just $5! Visit americanmensa.org/mht and use offer code: Local21

Questions

1. This addition puzzle can be done several ways. Here is a popular expression that can also be worked out in numbers. Substitute numbers for each letter, and you’ll have an answer that matches both in numbers and letters. Let C = 5.

     C A T S + D O G S = R A I N 

2. The following groups of letters consist of words that have had the same letter removed at least three times from each word. The letters have been scrambled. Can you replace the missing letter, which is the same for each word, and then unscramble them?

     S U I E     T O N E U     E A I O R

3. Your watches are in bad shape. One runs 2 minutes an hour fast and the other 2 minutes an hour slow. How soon will the fast one be one hour ahead of the slow one?

4. Using the same system the mapmaker did, can you figure out the missing distance?

     COLORADO  12 miles     CALIFORNIA  15 miles

     RHODE ISLAND  18 miles     MAINE  __? miles

5. It is sometime between noon and midnight. If it were two hours earlier, it would be twice as long until midnight as it would be if it were two hours later. What time is it?

Answers

1. C = 5, A = 1, T = 6, S = 7, D = 2, O = 9, G = 3, R = 8, I = 0 N = 4. 5167 + 2937 = 8104 

2. MUMMIES, MOMENTUM, MEMORIAM

3. Every hour, the fast watch picks up 4 minutes on the slower one. Therefore, in exactly 15 hours, it will be one hour ahead.

4. MAINE will be only 7 miles. You allow 1 mile for each vowel and 2 miles for each consonant.

5. 6 p.m.