Titan Talk

A couple of people have asked me what the deal is the the link to the Titan Test in my 'cool links' section.  It's really no big deal.  The Titan test is the successor to the Mega test, proposed as a 'Super IQ Test' when it was first published in Omni magazine in the early 80's.  At that time, my friend K and I took it, but didn't send it in or anything - it was just something to do for fun.  

Flash forward 20 years, I was on the net looking for brain candy and there I find numerous successors.  The page and various discussions can be fun and Darryl is a nice guy.

http://www.eskimo.com/~miyaguch/hoeflin.html

Anyway, my same friend, K and I downloaded the Titan as something fun to do with our downtime.  What I didn't realize was how the possibilities and power of the web changes things and how much pressure it puts on my integrity.  The questions can be very hard - some astonishingly so - and I'm pretty sure that if I used Google I'd find some answers very fast, but that's against the rules.  So there's conflict, but with something like this, if you cheat you're only fooling yourself - no one cares.

I've had two sticking points so far, the first I got through but not the second.  The first was Analogies number 24:

SWEETNESS: SUFFIX::  BOATSWAIN: ?

The Italics are on the original.  Anyway, it was very difficult and took me hours to figure out but the answer was incredibly satisfying and I felt a joy that I haven't felt in months at accomplishing it.

The second sticking point is on the sequences with number 45.

0 6 21 40 5 -504

I'm sure that somewhere out on the web is the answer to this and it's been soooo tempting to look it up - especially when I've been very frustrated.  I've spent maybe 5 hours on this problem attacking it from different directions, but no dice.  I got all the other sequences pretty quickly, and the reports show this isn't a particularly difficult one, but it is for me.

I haven't looked at the Probabilities, Interpenetrations, or Slice and Dice sections yet.  Frankly, words and sequences (Chrystallized G Problems) seem to come more easily.  I'm sure there are some in the other sections that will take so long that I won't even try.

If you see Chris Langan or Rick Rosner on youtube you'll no doubt think they come off as deeply weird (I did).  Chris, self described (and maybe rightly so) as the 'smartest man in america' got somewhere around 44-46/48 on the test, Rosner scored the only perfect score.  As I look over the test and think of Rosner's feat I find it unimaginable.  At this point I have answers for 35 and am dead certain only of 30.  Then again, I'm not even in these guys ball park when it comes to liquid G, so what do I expect? :-)

My friend, K, is just the opposite - he's slaughtering all the liquid G sections and waiting on the chrystallized G.  No doubt he'll kill those as well - he's that smart.

Anyway, something very fun to do on a long plane ride or when you simply want to use the old noggin - we don't get much chance to do so these days.

On the off chance you want to respond,

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PLEASE DO NOT POST ANY ANSWERS OR METHODS TO THE TEST
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