Jennifer vos Savant (or, just take my class and see that it's all a ruse)

This evening I visited some website, and an extra window popped up -- a "Classic IQ Test" from Tickle.com. Although this was essentially an ad, I found it rather compelling, and started taking the test.

After plodding through some analogies, filling the missing word into proverbs and maxims, and graphing the paths of cars traveling in different directions and discovering two 6-8-10 triangles that told me how far apart the cars had traveled, I came to the unsurprising realization that: this test is extremely similar to the SAT.

I am an SAT teacher, and, by damn, the test can be taught. So, naturally, I aced this fucking thing. I don't think this means I'm smarter than other people; I think it means I know how to solve analogies and deal with Sally traveling to work and back at 20 mph both ways while Joe travels to and from the same workplace at 30 mph and back at 10 mph (Sally gets home first).

Anyway, I was in the middle of one of those problems where you're given a series of three little graphs and asked to find which of several choices would complete the series. Unsurprisingly, my verbal skills are better than my spatial skills, and I was a bit stumped when a couple of friends showed up to my East Harlem abode to drag me out for drinks. I went, and came back a couple hours and a couple of drinks later, at which point, strangely, the answer to the question was very apparent to me: oh, that dot moves up one space and that dot moves diagonal one space and the other two stay the same! So, um, thanks for getting me drunk and making me smarter.

I think my favorite question was this one -- so simple, yet so elusive:

Ten people can paint 60 houses in 120 days, so five people can paint 30 houses in:
     15 days
     30 days
     60 days
     120 days

In the end, tickle.com told me my alleged IQ, and that I could buy a detailed score report for $12.95. They also said:

Your Intellectual Type is Visionary Philosopher. This means you are highly intelligent and have a powerful mix of skills and insight that can be applied in a variety of different ways. Like Plato, your exceptional math and verbal skills make you very adept at explaining things to others — and at anticipating and predicting patterns.

Is that really the most insightful thing they can think to say about Plato? I mean, those were some good dialogues. But The Republic -- a little tongue-in-cheek at times. His "exceptional math and verbal skills" made him adept at explaining things to others? I mean, I suppose he did explain the death of Socrates to me, but, by Jove, he didn't write it out in analogies and solid-object geometry multiple choice problems.