There’s an interesting and unusual-looking online puzzle contest happening on Saturday 28th May: the first round of the 2016 edition of HIQORA, the High IQ World Championships. It has an interesting structure: there will be two online rounds, with the top scorers from the first advancing to the second and the top 12 scorers from the second winning flights to, and accommodation for, the live world final in San Diego. (No clue if there’s any prize other than the trip and the title, but that’s easily good enough alone.) The first round is set to start at 4pm UK time on Saturday 28th May, and will be held simultaneously around the world, so it starts at 8am in San Francisco, 11am in New York, 6pm in Moscow and so on. (The web site suggests that it starts at 8pm in Beijing, but this may be a typo.) Can’t help feeling that this is even more of an advantage to people operating on European time already, and it does seem a shame that there won’t be many people who get to start at 1pm, 2pm or 3pm, but any time is bound to inconvenience some more than others.
The duration of the first round is yet to be confirmed. “The two Online Rounds will each be up to four hours in length, and held simultaneously around the world. Activities and questions are drawn from the HIQORA Championship Framework which explores multi-disciplinary aspects of high intelligence. Examples of these activities and questions may include: learning to play a new board game; interpreting complex literature and language passages; interactive case studies; mathematics and graphical workouts; spelling bees; memory workouts; knowledge of geographical facts and figures; and various exercises across science, technology, education and maths (STEM).”
You may be given the rules to a new board game, or other pre-reading, 72 hours in advance and thus a relatively limited time to master it. That sounds like rather a fun sort of challenge. It’s tempting to wonder whether or not the championships will attempt to be culture-neutral. The signs would seem to point to that not being a top priority, and (at the risk of an interpretation, which this site would love to learn is incorrect) might seem to imply a focus on English language culture. On the other hand, this would appear to be only a small part of the focus of the overall test.
One comment in the FAQ is particularly striking: “(…) it’s important to note that HIQORA is a test of natural intelligence, so study as such is of lesser importance to success in the competition than natural abilities.” This site tends to believe that puzzle contests covered by this site generally tend not to go out of their way to make that sort of distinction, and this is the point at which it’s tempting to get a little cynical about the extent to which a contest truly could separate natural abilities from facility at, and familiarity with, IQ test puzzles. Had this been clearly marketed as, say, “an IQ puzzle championship” then this site would have embraced it with open arms. On the other hand, the wide variety of components to the challenge mean that it seems to be intended to be more than just an IQ puzzle championship. That’s fair enough and probably makes for a more interesting event, but can something culture-specific really be a fair test of natural abilities to people around the world for a true world championship?
By way of full disclosure, I’ve never taken a formal IQ test and Mensa has never seemed appealing to me. That said, the Mensa members I’ve met in person have been thoroughly convivial to a (non-gender-specific) man; when I was taken as a guest by a Mensa member to a Mensa meeting – for that is perfectly possible – I enjoyed my evening there. While I tend to be leery at best when it comes to exclusivity being sold as an inherent virtue, I am thoroughly supportive of the necessarily elitist World Puzzle Championships as adding to the jollity of the world, though much of my favourable opinion comes from the context of the WPF’s outreach and accessibility of its qualification and Grand Prix events.
Whether the trimmings and trappings of the contest appeal, you’ll know whether or not it looks like a fun way to you to spend a few hours. At worst, it would appear to have a lot in common with the sorts of contests and challenges that this site enjoys. While the inflexible timescale may hinder – for instance, I’ll be between night shifts – it’s far from the only contest to have specified a particular timeslot in an attempt to avoid some people getting to see the questions before others. While nominally some people are charged US$40 for participation, several sources online quote HIQORAHighIQ as a code for free entry.
If you take part, this site wishes you well – and please come back and tell us all about it!
Following up on this, Round 2 happens tomorrow in a pretty similar style to Round 1, and the Round 1 top 40 has been posted. One recognisable name is Tammy McLeod, who is surely the Sudokulogy Tammy McLeod who won the $10k US championship in 2009. (Kudos to the organisers for their round 1 debrief too.)