They're not worthless, but as a measure of general intelligence, they have limited worth.
tl;dr:
- outside factors can influence test scores
- there are types of intelligence that they are not made to take into account
- attempting to concretely measure something as abstract as intelligence is inherently limited
IQ tests measure the ability to do well on IQ tests, which also has implications for other things to various degrees. But that's a common limitation of test-taking in general for you.
I've taken a few for fun. I got 148 on this one
just now.
ETA: Took the one on Mensa's website
, which was considerably harder. First time, by the end I was racing and randomly guessing to finish in time; scored in the 110s. Second time through, I managed to figure out a couple common patterns to some of the later ones and scored in the 120s(?). Third time, armed with the knowledge of my previous attempts, I was able to finish with a few minutes to spare and got 132(?). Still can't figure out the last few, plus question 20-something, the one with the black and white shapes on a line. Also still not sure about one of the earlier ones, the one with blacked-out/grayed-out diagonal halves of boxes.
Edited by Twiddler on Sep 24th 2023 at 1:31:04 AM
No. While IQ isn’t strictly a limit of ranges, it’s based on standard deviations from the average person, which is by definition 100. Even 200 is implausibly high (though I haven’t looked into enough to say 200 is impossible).
I like doing the puzzles, but take the scores with a heavy grain of salt. Best to think of them as "how well did I do at this particular test"* rather than a measure of intelligence, since... like I said, that's really what it is when it comes down to it
* More specifically, as ![]()
says, IQ is a measure of how well you did compared to the average, but I wouldn't trust some random online test to get that part right.

Have you ever took an IQ test (either Mensa or free test on the Internet). How much do you got?
Just for fun
Edited by LucasdaKool on Sep 23rd 2023 at 11:58:09 AM
https://enigmatics.org/puzzles/