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PaperclipPerfector  1mo ago (text post)   2940 thread views

Friday Fun Thread for March 27, 2026

Be advised: this thread is not for serious in-depth discussion of weighty topics (we have a link for that), this thread is not for anything Culture War related. This thread is for Fun. You got jokes? Share 'em. You got silly questions? Ask 'em.

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Emil Kirkegaard has a new test, a "Multifactor General Knowledge Test". Link here: https://taketest.xyz/mfgkt

It's short and takes maybe 5 minutes. The percentile rankings are fun. Surely The Motte can drag the distribution rightward.

My results. (Foiled again by my working class upbringing.)

293

Borderline unreadable on my phone, which was awesome. Probably should've read the rules about 5 correct answers to each one and not had a random employee interrupt me to yak endlessly about something.

Good thing you have many excuses for 'only' getting an excellent score.

I could come up with more.

My results.

Interestingly, the IQ estimate it gives is only a point off my actual IQ, or at least the score I got in the only test I ever took.

IQ estimate it gives? I didn't see any.

I've just realised the link I gave didn't actually show my results, but my 'real' IQ score is 128 and it estimated 127.

Oh, but I didn't see an IQ estimate in my own results when I took the test. Just some percentile graphs but that was about the test score, not anything else.

290, kinda feel like I should’ve gotten a few that I missed, but I also was pretty even across all categories, no major gaps. So I’ll take that!

283: 55/60 Computational, 49/50 International, 68/80 Cultural, 40/50 Aesthetic, 22/30 Literary, 39/40 Technical. Not surprised that I'm low relative to the average Motte poster, nor surprised that I'm weak in the humanities.

90th percentile. But effectively zero on culture.

Also - semtex is painkiller. Even trivial quantities of it are enough to make all the pain go away. Forever.

"Are you planning to help me?"

"YES."

"When, exactly?"

"ER. WHEN THE PAIN IS TOO GREAT TO BEAR."

"..."

"I REALISE THIS IS NOT THE ANSWER YOU WERE HOPING FOR."

RIP Terry Pratchett.

287, performed oddly well in cultural knowledge and most poorly in literary knowledge (The latter isn't surprising.).

306 - feeling pretty good though I was (relatively) destroyed on the culture section. A near-total lack of wine knowledge is once again my undoing

Damn you! I was about to come back and brag about getting the top score, but you tied me. If @Lewis2 is correct about the grading in his (nicely spoiler-protected!) point 1, though, I missed a point that way, and I was robbed!

Aesthetic knowledge killed me. 44/50, 79th percentile, and I think I guessed once or twice there so even the 44 might include some dumb luck.

268, unlike most in the thread I was strongest in literary, second in aesthetics, and 37th percentile in technical. Very low in cultural.

Some complaints about the quiz, several of which have already been mentioned by others:

  1. Kwanzaa is listed as a religious holiday, but it’s not.

  2. 420 is, at least in my experience, used to refer to the consumption of marijuana, not to the drug itself.

  3. France also had colonies in India. Anyone who knows that probably also knows the five correct answers, but the quiz still shouldn’t include ambiguous false answers.

  4. Even though everyone is pretty sure Israel has nukes, it has never been officially confirmed.

  5. A craftsman may use an awl, bevel, calipers, chisel, saw, or whisket (a specialized lathe).

  6. Many printings of Cryptonomicon put it at over 1,000 pages, but not all, and in fact, the first edition was only 918 pages.

  7. The quiz includes “cushy” as a synonym of “fancy,” but I can’t find any online dictionary that includes that definition. They only list “very easy” and “comfortable,” which are if anything antonyms.

I respect the complaints, but disagree on 2,4, and 7. 3 is a big question mark for me, since I felt like I knew what you mentioned but went off of "vibes".

Link doesn't seem to be working for me

98th percentile, weakest on aesthetics (as I expect many of us are).

I got 294, weakest on the Aesthetic Knowledge part, which seems reasonable to me.

It does help a lot to actually read the rules on the first page and consider them when answering - knowing that exactly 5 are correct on every one and that it mostly works against you to guess randomly since not picking wrong choices wins you a point too.

I completely whiffed on that bit, probably should be in slightly more visible text.

Funny, there's lots of people on that Twitter thread saying things like "how am I supposed to know x book is 1000+ pages" or "but I don't read poetry". I don't read poetry either but I could recognise at least 3 of them as poets. The reason I know War & Peace is 1000+ pages despite never reading it is because I've seen it on a bookshelf and been forever put off picking it up and reading it because until I saw it I didn't know people could write books that wide. I've never used make-up but I know the Maybelline jingle. I don't read a lot of history but I remember that Mexico has pyramids from reading stuff like Tintin or watching the Simpsons episode where Homer gets launched into the mushroom dimension by Chief Wiggum's chilli. I hate restaurants but I reckon I could pick 4/5 classic French dishes if that was a question. Meanwhile I've got more than a dozen art history books and I read classics for fun but aesthetics/literary was my lowest score.

It makes me wonder if some people, particularly younger people and Twitter users, are in an information environment where not only do they not often see how physically big certain books can be, or have to skim past the poetry section to find the graphic novels, or sit through a television advert that isn't algorithmically tuned to their specific micro-demographic, but also the dependence on apps means for example instead of seeing http error codes in a browser when they visit a badly configured website all they know is the endless and mutely spinning circle icon they see when any one part of the entire chain isn't working perfectly. Why would you know about SATA cables if everything is cloud storage for phone apps?

I'm sure if there was a Gen Z section with questions like "which of these are Instagram features" or "which of these people are famous streamers" I'd be down in the 5th percentile.

294, had no idea there were always 5, I know I left 4 on a few thinking there was a maybe and may have picked 6 on a few, too.

262 🥲

Very low in literature and “aesthetics”. Computer science is my specialty, so I got 58/60 in computational knowledge.

293 - the pyramids question, makeup, and poetry were my main misses. Also I didn't realize it was supposed to be exactly five until most of the way through...

You need to listen to more Joe Rogan of course for the pyramids. I’m not sure how to help with makeup and poetry.

Satisfactory 294, but I got absolutely wrecked by the aesthetics section: https://i.imgur.com/565DOyw.png

Currently making my girlfriend do it to see if there's a difference as she likely knows all the fabric patterns and makeup brands.

Edit: She knows about makeup but apparently not that HDD isn't a type of connection.

That's a solid trick option, though. If someone used the phrase "HDD cable", today I'd mentally translate that to "SATA" without thinking it was weird; decades ago "IDE" likewise (unless they were talking about a third party's high-end computer and I might need to check that they knew about SCSI).

299 - Got really stumped on the pyramids.

286, with the technology/computer stuff predictably clobbering me.

Edit: I overlooked the instruction about there always being 5 correct answers the first time I took it. After learning that I retook it and got 299.

287, which is apparently terrible for the self-reports here.

/images/17746559335861886.webp

I got 276, which is the best score if we are going by golf rules.

Nah. I got 275, and have been amused by the "oh no, I got 290, I suck so bad!" posts. 😂

271

Go me, so fucking go me!

Hang on, how do you have an IQ score listed at the top of yours?

Yesterday the author mentioned that he planned to add an IQ calculation the next day.

Thanks. I was surprised since I didn’t see one when I took the test, nor did any of the other screenshots include that info. Also, I don’t see how anyone could claim to test IQ from a general knowledge quiz.

You dropped this, king: 👑

You have bested me, but just barely. Next online quiz I will be seeking you out.

I got both of you beat but was discouraged enough by the other scores not to post.

If your score on that test makes you feel bad, try taking the Figure Reasoning test on the same site. I’ve never done so poorly on an intelligence test in my life.

It was all going so well until not even halfway through. Sod that.

Got 295.

Most points lost on cultural knowledge ;_;

Also did not read the instructions and it took a couple before I realized it was supposed to be 5.

I made the same mistake on my first attempt.

It is a fun test that shows how little I know about makeup and classical literature. I have a couple problems with it though. A few words appear to have spelling mistakes (the cancer is called is "leukemia" not "lukemia", for instance) so I am not exactly sure how those are counted. Am I supposed to notice them, or are they genuine mistakes by the author?

Some questions have a lot ambiguity to them. Like, one could use angstrom to measure distance, but is that a correct answer? And is a disease sexually transmitted if it can be transmitted through sex, but is not commonly thought of as such (would the common cold count as sexually transmitted)? Measuring book length in terms of pages is also weird, since it depends on the edition you got. Page and font size can be different, even if the content stays the same.

With that in mind, I can't take the test super seriously, but at least the categories are interesting, and legitimately span a wide array of topics.

The first spelling mistake (Cribbidge) fucked me up for a minute because I started second guessing if obvious-seeming answers were slightly misspelled as a trap (making it appear 6/10 are correct) until I realized they were just typos.

290, I'm sorta annoyed at the low literary score. For most of them I was really only guessing 4/5 answers every time. the 5th one was always really hard to get. Though I did perfect international knowledge, beating the stereotype of dumb self-centered americans I guess.

f37ac702-4bc1-4f26-a6e7-cde2080eaf75

300, apparently dragged down by my literary knowledge at the 78th percentile. 58/60 for technical knowledge though. I guess I really am a codecel.

Is 420 a slang term for marijuana?

Yes. I mean, no. I mean, yes. I mean...

284, though I don't really know english/american litterature much, so my litterature score is (I hope) understandably affected. 91st percentile non-anglo western.

290. Does that make us general knowledge midwit eskimo brothers? I didn't follow the directions and guessed 5 answers on each section. I did not think I was firing wildly on 5th answers for any of the sets .

My lowest score was international knowledge which feels bad, stupid Nubians. I did feel like the test skewed Millennial male, especially the technical section, although I appreciated the effort for balance with sets like tools vs. make-up brands. Not what I was expecting from a Kirkegaard general knowledge test. Good fun thread post.

I got 290 which is about as I expected, there are a few of rare English words that I must have missed, and I also am pretty low on pop-culture knowledge.

You guys are stacked holy shit

I got 291, I actually thought I did terrible bc I'm so lost on the arts/literary stuff but tech autism + years of grinding MCQ in university saved me I guess.

I'm 97th percentile in the US but 90th percentile vs the site, explains why I like it here.

291, but why did it default me to the 50-69 age bracket? I assume scores would be positively correlated with age.

Failed at cultural knowledge, but I already knew that would be true.

All scores are compared to the 50-69 age bracket, even if you don't put in an age. I believe the test itself is a bit older than the usual internet quiz, since it's from Open Psychometrics.

It did that to me as well.

291, and I thought I was being overcautious and not guessing enough.

The test felt biased toward a particular urban, educated, cultured professional's "general" knowledge, and there were topics missing that I would consider more representative of general knowledge than makeup brands or HTTP codes.

294, which I’m pretty happy with. I didn’t guess and as per the guidance didn’t mark anything unless I was sure. I got one PC cable wrong/missed the right answer and realized it as soon as I skipped to the next question (it was SATA). My intuition was right about the poets but I didn’t trust myself.

92nd percentile for US. 96th for non-Western. 77th for the site. Raw score of 284.

If it helps, I managed to do even worse on aesthetic knowledge.

301/320
99th percentile for all demographics apart from "this site" (98th).

Worst: Literary (25/30)
Best: Cultural and technical (78/80 and 39/40 respectively)

I played it fairly conservatively by not blindly guessing just to use up all 5 chances.

Similar, 302. Also lowest on the literary (26), and missed only one between both technical and computational. I also only chose options I was reasonably confident in and did not guess at all.

I'm glad somebody here has a higher score than me, I'm a total retard.

Looks like a lot of people got stung by not reading the instructions or getting hung up on typos.

294 points, or 99th anglophone percentile.

My weakest category was aesthetic, at the 71st percentile.

Apparently I know stuff about things?

299/320.
Worst category: aesthetic, 42/50.
Fewest attempted: literary, 30/30. I guess I was less willing to guess.

That was fun!

/images/17746341642146423.webp

I got 280 points. 88th percentile. The overall score was tanked by my lack of aesthetic knowledge, where 37/50 was only enough to put me in the 25th centile. Surprisingly in that light, my cultural knowledge is superb.

71 percentile among anglophones. Naturally, carried by technical and computer knowledge, heavily tanked by aesthetic and literary domains.

The question about number of pages in the books seemed completely arbitrary, because books can be printed in different font and paper sizes?????

A couple of people have brought this up, but there is no reasonable way to make the 1000+ page books listed fit in under 1000 pages, nor to blow up the smaller books to fit that size. Imagine a 999-page Infinite Jest - printers just don't make books in that size (it would be too small to be a coffee table book, but too large to be a normal format or fit on a small bookshelf. The normal book is around 1100 pages in a large format with a small font, and even smaller for the long footnotes). It's meant to be a test of general knowledge, not trick questions.

You’re mostly right, but Cryptonomicon is right on the border, at 918 to 1,168 pages, depending on the edition.

Huh, I read it as an ebook and it flashed by. Books feel a lot shorter on Kindle, I guess.

I agree, that wasn't a fair one.

I've been banging this drum for a long time.

98th overall, but only in the 60s in technical.

Interesting test. Probably my weakest question was http errors.

75th percentile in US, 79th in Anglo, 50th percentile among test takers on that site (?).

Greater than 70th percentile in everything except cultural info where I'm 8th percentile. I'm not sure what kind of upbringing I had but I think the test is saying 'sheltered'.

Rip. I know you IRL so I find this surprising.

Thank you! Much appreciated.

I think this was the category with different names for weed, different brands of cosmetics, etc. so that’s how I’m preserving my dignity.

I lurk /r/Redscarepod for fun (and field anthropology), so that gives me an unfair advantage when it comes to feminine insight.

Hell, even I'm a bit miffed at "only" 77th percentile for the site, I want to believe I'm special :(

Another RSP patrician.

I'm sad Reddit broke all the fun APIs, because that "users of X sub also like Y" tool was really fun, and I'm pretty sure slatestarcodex and RSP had a decent overlap and I've always found that very amusing.

I've never once listened to RSP, but I love their sub.

You couldn't pay me money to listen to the actual podcast, but it's an interesting crowd. I used to see @2rafa active there on occasion, and it was weird. Akin to running into your pediatrician at a rave.

I loved the podcast but Anna got xanax’d out and the subreddit degenerated into a sad hybrid of ChapoTrapHouse and MDE that I didn’t enjoy.

Are you on the redscareforgirlsandgays subreddit? It's better than the main subreddit, though half the people on there seem like leftists which completely confuse me as to what they're getting out of the podcast (though most people on there also claim never to listen to it or to have stopped listening years ago.) I guess if you're not listening to the content of their points and just distracted by the aesthetic you can be convinced or deceived into thinking they're not right wing but it's bizarre to me that people still seem unsure at this point

I'm not surprised. Disliking the podcast but appreciating the community is... very common. Almost universal on the sub, in my experience.

No answer key after the end? Aw.

Beat you by 1 point though.

Which of these countries possess nuclear weapons?
Israel

Lmao.

296, but I absolutely lol'd at that one and the 420 one, in exactly the same way as @sarker.

There's also US nuclear weapons in Germany. They're under a shared US-NATO command structure. German officers are nominally in charge of delivering these weapons in a time of war. Does that mean Germany "possesses" nuclear weapons? Only the test author knows :(

My impression is that there were lots of ambiguous questions like this where some answers could be reasonably argued either way.

There were. The one that got me was the French colonies. I'm guessing that they wouldn't count India, and that most educated people wouldn't guess India, but only because most people don't know about the colony at Pondicherry.

My results: 280/320.

/images/17746329662482057.webp

I only noticed afterwards that exactly five answers are correct and five false. Curious if I can improve my score armed with this knowledge.

Second attempt: 288/320.

/images/17746366354556532.webp

Congrats! Better than mine...

How do you upload an image?

When you post a comment, select the rightmost icon below the text window. It goes bold–italics–quote–link–image.

How do you upload an image?

There's a button underneath the text-entry field.

I just get an error when I use it. Thanks though.

He also mentions:

Of course, this test has massive cultural bias!

There also seem to be a lot of typos in the options.

KnowledgeScore (out of maximum possible)Percentile out of USAians of ages 50–69…out of Anglosphere* people
Computational58/609999
International47/509797
Cultural74/805576
Aesthetic41/504253
Literary24/307068
Technical39/409697
Total293/3209798

*US, CA, IE, UK, AU, and NZ. (Insert angry Éire noises?)

I think the typos are deliberate foil questions, under the assumption that a person genuinely familiar with the topic would notice that the word was misspelled.

If that's the case, that is dirty pool given he didn't say "misspellings don't count" up front. I chalked the misspellings up to test creator error, and picked them (except for one where there was a misspelling and the correct spelling both as options).

Same. Quatar is a major producer of oil!

That would be crazy not to tell you and just have it as a trick. Anyway, I picked the typoed options as if there were correct, and got 304 overall, broken down into:

Computational Knowledge

56 / 0–60 97th centile Site: 86th

International Knowledge

47 / 0–50 97th centile Site: 70th

Cultural Knowledge

78 / 0–80 97th centile Site: 97th

Aesthetic Knowledge

47 / 0–50 95th centile Site: 95th

Literary Knowledge

28 / 0–30 96th centile Site: 90th

Technical Knowledge

38 / 0–40 91st centile Site: 78th

So I don't think the typos can be traps or I'd have done worse. Embarrassing score on Literary for a wordcel like me though.

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