Customer Reviews

The Ultimate IQ Test Book: 1,000 Practice Test Questions to Boost Your Brain Power

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If you're looking to exercise your brain, these tests will certainly stimulate and strengthen your noodle and result in improved brain function and longevity - the medical community is in consensus with this. But, if you're trying to see what your IQ is, these tests might not be the most representative. The tests in this book are actually HARDER than real IQ tests, or at least the one I was given.

Several years ago, a former employer sent me with a group of employees, all part of a management training program, to take a series of tests and evaluations. A professionally administered and proctored IQ test was given as part of the process. The main difference between the tests in this book and the REAL IQ test was that the ladder was multiple choice and the tests in this book have many questions that require a written answer that doesn't allow for guessing. This in fact makes the tests in this book more difficult than a standardized IQ test.

These tests are challenging, to say the least. But after you've done a few, you'll better understand the logic that goes into conceiving the questions and your scores will improve.

I'm contemplating applying for membership into MENSA and I am confident that doing these practice tests will significantly improve my entry score compared to if I went in cold.

But I feel the best use of these tests is for brain exercise. Unless you're in school or actively learning new, complex things, your brain gets into autopilot mode and starts atrophying. Consistent challenges like problem solving is one of the best ways to keep you mind sharp.

A good IQ exercise book that helps me to kill time while travelling in the train and waiting for somebody. It also provides great exercise for keeping the brain power in motion.

"The Ultimate IQ Test Book" is a collection of 25 IQ tests (mostly drawn from "The Times Book of IQ Tests" books 1, 3 and 5 - no idea what was wrong with the tests in books 2 and 4). The questions in this book are culturally unbiased (unlike those in some other IQ test books that I have seen) and cover the three main areas of intelligence that are typically covered by IQ tests, that is, verbal intelligence, numerical intelligence and spatial/visual intelligence. However, the word "ultimate" in the title is a bit of an overstatement.

The biggest drawback about this book is that the tests are unstandardized. What this means is that you can get a score for each of the tests in this book and you are told whether you are average, excellent, exceptional, etc, based on this. However, it is not possible to convert these scores to IQ values. Furthermore, the questions in this book are slightly different from those that are typically found in most standard IQ tests. Mensa's website recommends the books of H.J. Eysenck, for those wishing to practice for their entry exam, and the questions in this book are quite different from Eysenck's questions. Also, the solutions to the questions are not always well explained. There are several questions in this book that I still can't solve, even with the answers.

This book is a reasonable puzzle book and may provide some assistance to those intending to sit an IQ test in the future, but only if you're run out of other practice problems. For people actually wishing to calculate their IQ, then this is not the book for you. A more suitable book is Test Your IQ. "Test Your IQ" is not a perfect book either, but at least it allows you to get a numerical value for your IQ, rather than simply telling you that you are "exceptional".