is Tom taller or shorter than Harry?
Do you find thinking puzzles like this one easy, hard or somewhere in between? However you find them, they can help you assess and improve your practical thinking skills. If you answered that Tom is shorter than Harry, you've just shown your ability at a skill which psychologists call sequential thought.
People who have learned to organize their ideas into sequences or chains of logic can usually reason their way effectively through confused or complicated situations in the business of living.
Are you hungry for mental stimulation? The following Thinker's Test will challenge and exercise a variety of practical thinking skills, so you can identify your strongest ones as well as those that need further development. Before going through the questions, consider these useful strategies: Approach each question with a playful, flexible and exploratory attitude. Draw thinking diagrams — sketches or "models" — to help organize your thoughts. Think out loud. Put your thoughts into words. Use names, labels and verbal relationships to clarify and add structure to your thought processes.
You'll find the answers below, along with a discussion of the various kinds of thinking skills they call forth. (Don't peek at any other answers before you've solved the questions!)
Don't feel discouraged if you haven't managed to get every question right — most people don't. There is no scoring system, so it's more important to think about thinking — and your relative strengths and learning needs — than to wind up with the "right" answer.
Here are the questions:
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2. Find the pattern that governs this familiar sequence, and figure out the next letter: Put your answer in the box, and click the link to check your result. |
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3. If three days ago was the day before Friday, what will the day after tomorrow be? (Hint: type the initials of the days of the week in a sequence, and use it as a visual aid.) Put your answer in the box, and click the link to check your result. |
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5. Six drinking glasses stand in a row, with the first three full of water and the next three empty. By handling and moving only one glass, how can you arrange the six glasses so that no full glass stands next to another full one, and no empty glass stands next to another empty one? Put your answer in the box, and click the link to check your result. |
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6. Excavating in England, an archeologist found a Roman coin dated "44 B.C." and bearing a likeness of Julius Caesar. Another archeologist correctly identified the coin as a fake. How did she know? Put your answer in the box, and click the link to check your result. |
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8. In five minutes, write down as many unusual uses as you can for a paper clip. Put your answer in the box, and click the link to evaluate your list: |
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10. Imagine that you put two pieces of typing paper on your desk with a piece of carbon paper (or tracing paper of some kind) between them, as if you wanted to write something in duplicate. Now, imagine that you fold this assembly in half with the crease running left to right, bringing the lower half back up under the top half. If you write your name on the top half of the top sheet, how many copies will you make, where will they appear (front, back, first sheet, second sheet), and how will they be oriented? Explain your answer in the box, and click the link to check your result. |
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