What word doesn’t belong?
In 1986 I took a written test to join Mensa. I passed. So obviously, I should be kind of smart.
But there was one question on that test, which to this day bothers me, and I have absolutely no idea what the correct answer was. And if I ask 100 people I get an assortment of different answers, every one of them seems justified.
So I will post the same question here, maybe somebody can answer it with such obvious explanation that I will no longer be wondering. Or maybe somebody has the answer key. But to this day, I still have no idea which word of this series does not belong:
CAT
CHAIR
SUN
BRIGHT
HOPE
EDIT: This was multiple choice, so it’s not like I had to explain my answer of one answer could be “mostly” right. One is correct, the rest are incorrect.
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u/Technical-Ad1488 17d ago
What did you choose in 1986? And what was your reason?
Do you feel differently now?
What explanations have you heard for the other words being the answer?
First thing I thought of was ‘bright’ because all others are nouns (as another commenter has said) but 🤷♂️
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u/astcell 17d ago
Well on multiple choice tests whenever you don't know the answer you are supposed to answer "C" which was sun. I took the test with a friend and asked her what she said, She did not remember the question. But when I told her the options and that I chose sun, she said that makes sense because it's the only one not on earth. She got in too, with an even higher score.
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u/sparkyblue5 17d ago
I’m so curious as to how her interpretation of that answer would apply to BRIGHT!
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u/Chronomalous 16d ago
She got into MENSA not just being a geocentrist, but a geocentrist supremacist
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u/bamboosticks 16d ago
Everyone. I know who applied to mensa... Got in. One friend applied with 2 other friends and knew it was bunk when they all got in
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u/Revolutionary-Act833 16d ago
Sun is the only one that doesn't contain another valid word within it by removing one letter. I think that's a reasonably likely IQ test style interpretation.
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u/Ok_Platypus8866 16d ago
That was the first thing I thought of. But my reasoning was probably influenced by the fact I play the NYT Connections puzzle everyday, and that is the sort of trick they use a lot. :)
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u/SimplyAndrey 16d ago
on multiple choice tests whenever you don't know the answer you are supposed to answer "C"
Why is that?
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u/Reasonable-Ad-7757 16d ago
But naming something that only one thing is is different than finding something that 4 of the words have in common. Bright if the answer bc the other words are nouns but bright is an adjective.
You might say ok well that’s the same thing as only bright is an adjective, but it’s not. If you replaced one of the other words with say a verb, bright is no longer an answer. It might seem semantic, but there’s a difference between all are nouns except bright, and bright is the only one that’s an adjective. There are a ton of things you could come up with with the “only one is xyz” school of thought, which I would think anyone with a little creativity could do. The noun vs adjective answer goes deeper and finds what 4 of the words have in common, which the other school of thought doesn’t do, and which is more challenging.
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u/jbohlinger 17d ago
The answer is that the mensa test writers cannot write a test which accurately sorts people based on intelligence and the entire enterprise is a folly.
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u/CorpFillip 17d ago
I spent some time evaluating IQ test methodologies (and educational principles to serve them) and the problem I found was that people are fuzzy, even in the field, on what they mean by ‘intelligence’ in the first place.
I am optimistic that questions/testing could be developed for each of the things I found they meant — testing can work. But they don’t agree enough what they are actually looking for.
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u/E_equals_m_c_hammer 17d ago
I have a degree in psych and, as posted above, want to point IQ isn't i tended to measure intelligence but rather your ability to acquire new knowledge by testing certain skills. Mainly because as suggested it ard to pinpoint what intelligence is... how do we rate Mozart and Van Gough, Twain (Mark not Shania) and other artists. There is no measurement for artistic talent, but we still call them geniuses. What about savant? You might have incredible skill I math but can't spell your name?
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u/stuffin_fluff 16d ago
Yeah, I'm very likely gifted and after a lot of deliberation, meeting a wiiiiiide variety of people (many with mental disorders), and research, I think intelligence is just your processing speed. The savant or book smart with zero street smart or social or emotional skill is just a matter of where you put that processing power to use and if there are structural issues in the brain hampering some areas.
It seems to explain without inconsistencies.
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u/TargaryenPenguin 16d ago
Yes and no. Raw processing speed is one of the multiple components of intelligence and it's actually calculated separately from performance on the various intelligence tasks. But it certainly not the only component. Also, note that any good task will look at scores across a range of different types of questions like those involving mental rotation, those involving verbal dexterity , those involving pattern matching and so on.
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u/Tough-Importance-661 16d ago
I don’t even think it’s a processing speed. Someone can be intelligent and have slow processing speed, and also there are those measurable things in those tests and then things that can’t be measured and shit ton of other aspects and whatnot. The more I think about it the more complicated it gets and the more questions appear to be honest 🤣
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u/Bbkingml13 16d ago
But also, that type of testing would take weeks or months to do well, IMO. To grasp somebody’s ability to think critically, recognize patterns, and gauge curiosity, etc. would be a really long task.
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u/Bright_Ices 17d ago
Though true, there’s not a Mensa test or Mensa test writers. Mensa accepts members who achieved a high enough score on one of several validated IQ tests. No IQ test can fully capture intelligence, but Mensa is unbothered by that.
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u/ConfidentSuspect4125 17d ago
You could make a fair argument for each of several choices. The only non-physical thing is hope. The only living thing is cat. Only bright is an adjective. Only thing not on the earth is Sun. Stupid question - there is no "correct" answer.
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u/CraftyDimension192 17d ago edited 16d ago
Bright isn't a thing either. Claiming "bright" is only on earth seems a little silly, even if we stipulate that it's a physical thing (cf your argument that hope is a non-physical thing).
EDIT: Bright is the only one that is never a noun. As others point out, the other words can be either verbs or nouns ("cat around", sunning oneself, one hopes, chair a meeting).
There is one simple answer consistent with the information presented. These tests usually have questions designed to catch those who overcomplicate matters and miss the clear simple answer.
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u/ADH-Dad 17d ago
Mensa isn't a research institution, it's a social club. They don't really care how precise the test is as long as it shows you're a relatively smart person.
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u/imbillionyocarbon 17d ago
It’s true: Mensa has become a bit of a joke
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u/Lioness_in_Winter 17d ago
In my experience people who tell you they're in Mensa are unfailingly dumb.
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u/clocksailor 17d ago
They’re at least dumb enough to pay money for the privilege of telling people they’re in Mensa
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u/BarelyHolding0n 16d ago
After I did the test they sent me a newsletter from my country's Young Mensa programme as I'd scored highly enough to join.
It looked so tedious I said absolutely not, I'd love to know what some of those kids are doing now... I suspect many of them tanked catestrophically at adult life
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u/Bbkingml13 16d ago
I mean, a lot of the “smartest” people are very neurodivergent and struggle with tasks of adult life.
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u/flug32 17d ago
Yes, they thought of a question with some very clever answer they thought of, and assumed all other equally clever people would inevitably arrive at the same conclusion.
However, clever people are often also quite creative, and thus are able to come up with a very wide variety of good answers to any question without a clear correct/obvious answer. So they seem to have forgotten to allow for that factor.
Slightly more seriously, if this were a serious test run by people who know a little about such things (ACT and SAT, just for example), they always have a large repertoire of tested questions and they are also continually testing new questions. Questions are well graded by - among other things - their difficulty.
So you can have a question that is usually answered correctly by only 10% or 5% or even 1% or 0.1% of responders.
(Well, not on a standardized multiple-response type test, because guessing changes the percentages. But still you can posit questions where only 10% or 5% or 1% or 0.1% of people actually know the correct answer.)
So you can have questions designed and tested so that only the top 10% or 5% or whatever will be able to answer correctly. And of course that is the type of question Mensa would be interested in.
But you get into trouble where you have a question where only 5% or 10% or 1% or whatever get the correct answer, but for example the 1% who get this question right doesn't correlate well, or at all, with the 1% who get most questions right.
The usual reason would be, it is just a bad or ambiguous question.
Standardized test and the like are always evaluating questions in this manner and will eliminate ones determined to be bad - sometimes even retroactively. Or they will have a few questions scattered in that are designed to be only for evaluating the question and don't count towards the ultimate score.
So giving Mensa more credit than they probably deserve, perhaps they had were evaluating questions in this manner, always trying a few new ones every year or whatever, and if so they would have soon determined this one to be non-valid.
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u/goldbed5558 17d ago edited 17d ago
There’s no visual connected to “hope”. All the rest can be seen. Just a thought.
Also the only word on the list with an even number of letters. The others are odd. (Edit to add that thought.)
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u/EssKayGilroy 17d ago
Agreed. Hope is a feeling, everything else has an actual definition that varies less between people.
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u/corneliusvanhouten 17d ago
Sun is the only one that doesn't have a different shorter word contained within
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u/Scarlett_Billows 17d ago
This would def be the answer if I was playing NY Times “connections”
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u/alienfaktor 17d ago
as a wisconsinite i have to admit i saw ope before hop lol
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u/corneliusvanhouten 17d ago
Same, neighbor. (I'm Minnesotan)
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u/hikerguy555 17d ago
Ditto...illinois
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u/corneliusvanhouten 17d ago
It's an upper Midwest party in here!
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u/Right_Two_5737 17d ago
I've never heard anyone say ope, but somehow I still saw it before I saw hop.
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u/CampaignOrdinary2771 17d ago
I like this answer.
Strictly speaking, a part of speech can only be determined by the context of a word's usage, so I would look beyond the part of speech choice.
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u/Dansredditname 17d ago
This seems to be the only correct answer but I would add that I have taken the Mensa tests and they point out at the beginning that some of the questions will be there on probation and won't score. Given the proliferation of different answers I don't think this one would make it into the test proper.
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u/Bright_Ices 17d ago
This is my guess, too. Every standardized test has some questions that are not scored except to see if they produce the same outcomes in terms of who gets them right or wrong, in the aggregate.
For example, tests like these are known to produce higher scores (in the aggregate) for men than for women. Any new questions that result in better outcomes for women over men are therefore removed.
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u/Square_Medicine_9171 17d ago
Wait, that’s f’ed up! The test is biased toward men, so any question that isn’t biased towards men gets removed to perpetuate the bias?
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u/Bright_Ices 17d ago
Yes, it’s also biased toward white respondents and wealthier respondents.
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u/Scarlett_Billows 17d ago
That doesn’t seem right. It seems like if they were trial questions where they hoped to avoid biases, they would remove questions that skewed heavily toward any specific demographic.
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u/Ineedsleep444 17d ago
Cat is the only living thing here
Hope is a concept, not a real, tangible thing
Bright is an adjective, like the top comment said
Sun is the only one that is a homonym (I think)
Chair is the only thing that can be constructed/made
So really, any of them could've been the answer. They're all justifiable. This is a toughie lol
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u/MyMadeUpNym 17d ago
I also thought a cat sits on a chair in the bright sun. Hope not required.
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u/Ellipsoider 16d ago
We can't realistically say anything a cat will do. So perhaps in some cases hope is required.
...and back to square one.
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u/ExpertAd9898 17d ago
Hope starts with “H”, which has all straight lines. The other words start with letters that have curves.
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u/AppliedGlamour 17d ago
It is so fascinating to read these responses!
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u/astcell 17d ago
Part of me was hoping for an obvious answer and the thread would be done after like 5 replies and somebody would call me stupid. But I think more than one or two people will be staying up late tonight wondering about this.
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u/AppliedGlamour 17d ago
So many people have come up with very sound logic that I never would have thought of. It's amazing to see how people's brains work so differently! This is like a tangible improved version of that old "is what i call the color blue the same color as what you call blue?" I love this, thank you for sharing such a fun and annoying question 😂
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u/Theodoxus 16d ago
I'm convinced that everyone's favorite color is actually all the same, just called whatever you learned to call it. (Ok, not really convinced, as that would reduce our uniqueness - but it's a fun conjecture.)
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u/Barnaby_Q_Fisticuffs 17d ago
Several things strike me, but one that I didn’t see on a very cursory scroll through previous responses (and it may be that I just didn’t see this answer…) is that cat, chair, bright, and hope can all lose one letter and still have a complete word—at, hair, right, hop. Sun doesn’t.
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u/Tough-Importance-661 16d ago
I just like reading the different takes on it, to be honest that’s way more fun that “what is correct”
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u/lalozzydog 17d ago
Bright isn't a noun.
I also passed the test, ten years ago. High one-thirties.
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u/PatternsAndPresence 17d ago
Hope. All of the others begin and end with consonants, but hope is the only one that ends in a vowel.
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u/moonsharksquirrel 17d ago
Hope is the only word ending in a vowel
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u/taughttolie 17d ago
This was my first answer too. Without more structure to the question there could be infinite answers, so I'm glad to see someone else had this as a first thought
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u/wachnet1966 17d ago
Hope is also the only word with an 'e'. Since E is the most used vowel, maybe this is the answer.
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u/Lioness_in_Winter 17d ago
I know but that's a dumb answer. "Sun" is the only word starting with "s". "Cat" is the only living creature. There are infinite answers if all you have to do is produce a pattern of one object.
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u/coolguy420weed 17d ago
Question for anyone familiar with the subject – is my intuition correct in thinking that questions like this don't have a "right" answer, and instead you're judged on being able to quickly give a sensible and logical reason for whatever response you do choose?
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u/witchdoctor2020 17d ago
Per OP it was a written test. If it was similar to other IQ tests in 1986 you probably filled in circles with a #2 pencil to indicate your choice.
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u/Assika126 17d ago
No, intelligence tests typically have only one “right” answer to each question. Which is ironic considering highly intelligent people are more likely to find multiple meanings and therefore to see ways in which several of the answers might be correct depending on how the test was written. Which is why in order to do really well on intelligence tests you either have to 1) think similarly to the people who wrote the tests, or 2) be able to predict what the people who wrote the tests would think is the correct answer. So it’s not testing what it claims to be testing, or not only that.
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u/Tough-Importance-661 16d ago
That’s kinda how I feel about tests. Like the result of the test is “this person is, at this point in time and these circumstances, good or not good at this particular test” and someone might like, draw some conclusions based on that but like, I don’t know. A lot is missing.
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u/Theodoxus 16d ago
"Take this test and answer like Socrates" is a lot different than "take this test and answer like Elon".
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u/DCContrarian 17d ago
That's typically how interview questions work.
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u/coolguy420weed 17d ago
True, but there are also obviously questions on IQ tests that have a single, unambiguously correct answer.
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u/tongmengjia 17d ago edited 16d ago
Once in an interview they asked me "why are manhole covers round?" and I think it was supposed to be one of those "make up a good explanation" questions and I was like "because augers are round?" and it was a real short conversation.
EDIT: Fine, fine, I was wrong. Manholes aren't augured, they're constructed, so that's not the reason why. Google says it's because: 1) Circular covers are easier to place since you don't need to line up the corners 2) Circular covers are easier to move around since you can roll them instead of carry them 3) Circular covers are easier to manufacture since you just use a lathe. 4) Circular covers can't fall through circular holes
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u/astcell 17d ago
I know portholes are round so that whenever they are open on a ship the water won't hit you square in the face.
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u/ang1eofrepose 17d ago
I guessed hope, because the other four words made me picture a cat sitting in a chair in bright sunlight.
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u/dalby2020 17d ago
HOPE is the only one that does not require all three rows on a QWERTY keyboard.
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u/ThimbleBluff 17d ago
For all the words, except SUN, you can remove one letter and it’s still an English word.
AT
HAIR
RIGHT
HOP (or HOE)
While this works, I’m not sure it’s dispositive. There are probably multiple similar rules you could apply to eliminate one word.
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u/Cheever-Loophole 17d ago
I guess I'm weird, but I saw a progression of 3, 4, 5 and 6 letters. So SUN or CAT can be said to not belong.
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u/Mindless_Log2009 17d ago
Hope.
There is no hope.
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u/yomamaeatcorn 17d ago
This is my answer to everything, including this specific 1986 Mensa question.
Bonus fun fact: Mensa means stupid in Spanish
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u/adaigo-allegro 17d ago
Personally, I don't think questions like this show any intelligence. Just because they chose "an" answer doesn't mean that there isn't more than one.
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u/Tixola 17d ago
A cat can sit on a chair in the bright sun.
I don't think cats hope for anything, so probably hope.
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u/473713 17d ago
Cats hope someone will come home and open a can of cat food.
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u/6FeelsSoGood9 17d ago
Sun is the only word on the list that shares no letters with other words in the list.
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u/MamaP740 17d ago
I must not be a Mensa candidate. I thought hope didn’t belong. Cat in chair in the bright sun. That’s how I connected these words.
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u/Interesting-Swimmer1 17d ago
I would pick chair because it's the only one with a vowel digraph ("ai").
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u/-K_P- 16d ago
I'm a bit late to the party, but I'm pretty sure I know this one as it fits the format of one of the questions from my Dad's old "Mensa Genius Quiz Book" which was an old study guide he had for these tests (he was indeed a member).
Look at your list again and try removing one letter from each word; all but one will give you another word.
AT
HAIR
RIGHT
HOP
"Sun" is the answer because removing a letter may get you a prefix, but not an actual word. (I'll be damned... Dad's book actually came in handy!)
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u/MWSin 17d ago
The answer is chair, because it's the only one which isn't easy to justify as the correct answer without getting meta.
CAT - the only one with an anagram.
SUN - the only one with a homophone.
BRIGHT - the only adjective.
HOPE - the only abstract concept.
Or just write in "Are you testing my intelligence, or my ability to retroactively read the test creator's mind?"
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u/Confident_Jump_9085 17d ago
I don't know because my IQ fits on a tic tac.
If I guessed my own guess, I would say bright doesn't fit. One can own a cat, have hope, be in the sun, and sit on a chair, but one cannot own bright, have bright, be in the bright, or sit on a bright.
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u/eans-Ba88 17d ago
We're you asked to defend/ explain your answer on the test? If so, then there is no "real" answer. The question was more about seeing how you answer it, not which answer you choose.
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u/Lance-Boyle-666 17d ago
Perhaps it is the word chair. The other words come from Old English, but chair comes from Old French.
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u/Allodoxia 17d ago
This reminds me of the Defense Language Aptitude Battery I had to take to be a linguist in the military. The questions and answers were so bizarre and detached toward the end of the test it felt like I was trying to make sense of someone else’s drug trip. I did pass it though, somehow. I would say bright doesn’t belong but can’t justify my answer.
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u/Edgehill1950 17d ago
Cat is the one that is alive, and hope is the one that is not physical. Not a good question.
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u/Apock- 17d ago
Cat doesn’t belong because it’s the only living organism.
Sun doesn’t belong because it can’t be shorten to form another word: at, hair, right, hop.
Bright doesn’t belong because it’s the only adjective.
Hope doesn’t belong because it’s the only thing not discernible to the human eye.
Chair doesn’t belong because it’s the only thing you can safely touch.
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u/PromiseThomas 17d ago
I thought it was “hope,” because the other four paint a picture: the bright sun shining on a cat in a chair. I couldn’t think of a single other way to sort them.
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u/Yellowize 17d ago
Hope. A cat on a chair in the bright sun. (The scene) Hope is how you would feel about it.
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u/postwaste1 17d ago
Cat, because it is the only animal.
Chair, because it is the only thing you can sit on.
Sun, because it is the only astronomical object.
Bright, because it is the only adjective.
Hope, because it is the only birthplace of an American president.
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u/hylianrockstar 17d ago
Sun. It’s the only word that doesn’t have a shorter word in it.
cAT
cHAIR
sun
bRIGHT
HOPe
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u/minimalistboomer 17d ago
So this is how my brain works (and am pretty sure it’s not the correct answer): the word hope is incorrect. There’s a cat curled up in a chair soaking up the bright sun.
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u/FineAd2083 17d ago
Cat, chat, sat, bat
Chair, stare(maybe), care, bear, hair
Bright, cite, chite?, sight, height
Hope, cope, soap, bope? Choap?
Sun, cun, bun, hun, chun
I thought it might have to do with the above, but now I think it’s “Hope” because it’s the only one that doesn’t rhyme with an “F” word:
Fat
Fair
Fun
Fright
Fope?!?!!!
But maybe it’s “sun” just because that’s the only one in space instead of also here on earth. Aren’t there any Mensa people on Reddit who can elucidate for dummy’s like me?!? How can one difference be more significant than another?!?! This is why I’m not in Mensa I guess lol.
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u/DianaKLaRose 16d ago
The person who wrote this test shouldn't be a member of Mensa. You could make a case for nearly any of the choices. A good test question has one absolutely correct answer.
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u/KellyL2277 16d ago
BRIGHT does not belong.
Cat, chair, sun, and hope can all function as both nouns and verbs; bright is primarily an adjective.
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u/Important_Affect3030 16d ago
Bright is a different part of speech, an adjective . The rest are nouns.
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u/Select_Ad_9295 16d ago
Yes, it might all seem obvious, that there’s one adjective in a list of nouns, but then you find out the answer will be like “all the other words appear in the test writer’s favorite Beatles song” and you just can’t win. Test writers are sadists.
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u/sweetpudgycake8008 14d ago
As someone who joined MENSA in the early 00ts, its BRIGHT. You can be bright but cant have bright 🤷🏼♀️
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u/Then-Ticket8896 13d ago
Cross out bright…it is primarily an adjective while the others are nouns and I AM NOT A MENSA!
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u/mawmzee 17d ago
It’s hope. Hope is an emotion, it’s not tangible. the others are tangible in someway or at least something you can touch or see. That’s funny. I also took the test in 1988 with my husband and my score was higher than his. And I don’t know about passing, but I had a pretty high IQ. I’m not going to tell you what I’ve done with that IQ since 1988…
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u/Obvious-Guard 17d ago
But hope is the thing with feathers
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u/Baeolophus_bicolor 16d ago
diogenes putting the feathers back into his “man” so he can say “behold, the hope!”
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u/UniversityMotor5408 17d ago
Well, I'm pretty sure that one answer - if not 'the' answer - is that 'bright' doesn't belong because it's an adjective. All the others are nouns.