The following extracts are from the Book of Mental World
Records published by The Buzan Centres. The Buzan Centres
specialise in skill enhancement products and can help you:
- Develop your ability to learn
- Become mentally literate
- Sharpen your mental skills
- Think more clearly and rapidly.
To order the Book of Mental World Records, or for
further information about Buzan Centres products, please call
the Buzan Centres
in the UK on 01202 674676, or fax 01202 674776.
Test Yourself!
The following test allows you to compare your IQ with that of World
Chess Champion Garry Kasparov. The ten questions are based on a test he took.
1. Which is the odd one out?
Salmon, whale, shark, trout, pike
2. Insert the two missing numbers:
6,9,18,21,42,45,??,??
3. Which is the odd one out?
Venus, Saturn, Hermes, Pluto, Uranus
4. Choose the word to complete the sentence:
Hearing is to acoustics as seeing is to ????????
5. Complete the row of numbers:
3,5,8,13,22,??
6. Who is the odd one out?
Haydn, Mahler, Aristotle, Brahms, Stravinsky
7. Which is the odd one out?
Paris, Washington, Oslo, Cairo, Bombay, Rio de Janeiro, Berlin
8. Which is the odd number out?
625,361,256,197,144
9. Insert the missing letter:
B,E,?,Q,Z
10. Complete the following number sequence:
4, 6, 9, 13
7, 10, 15, ??
Try to answer all question before going to
the solutions below.
WHO IS THE ALL-TIME GREATEST MIND SPORTS CHAMPION?
The automatic answer to this question
would be Garry Kasparov, undisputed World Chess Champion
for over ten years, international media personality and
multi-millionaire. However, Kasparov somewhat blotted his
copybook by losing a six-game challenge match, in May
1997, to IBM's Deep Blue computer. Meanwhile,
draughts champion Dr Marion Tinsley made such a huge
impression during his match in London against the Chinook
program in 1992, that this question is definitely worth
asking. For example, the implacable Dr Tinsley, aged 65,
played four games a day (totalling nine hours), six days
a week with only one rest day over a 39 game match.
Spectacularly, in so doing, Dr Tinsley
turned the "Turing Test" on its head. The
Turing Test, famously, posits that if experts cannot
distinguish between human and computer output in certain
areas, then the machine is said to be "thinking".
When analysts were poring over the 39 games played, they
found to their surprise, that not knowing whether the
human or the computer was playing black or white, they
consistently concluded that the mistake-prone, relatively
non-elegant moves played by the computer were those
played by Dr Tinsley, while the magnificently immaculate
moves played by Dr Tinsley were, in fact, by the computer.
This provides a fascinating insight into how the human
brain still underestimates itself and inappropriately
overestimates silicon intelligence when the evidence is
quite demonstrably to the contrary.
When seeking to answer the enthralling
question, who is the greatest Mind Sports champion of all-time,
a number of significant factors must be taken into
account. Before we enumerate the critical criteria for
establishing the greatest Mind Sportsman of all-time, we
must be certain that we have selected the leading
candidates from the major Mind Sports. Apart from
Kasparov and Dr Tinsley the following five grand
champions in their sphere should be considered:
Oyama Yasuharu
Oyama Yasuharu totally dominated the game
of shogi for a twenty year period from the early 1950s
to the early 1970s. He won 80 titles,
overwhelmingly the largest number ever, and was still a
title challenger in 1989 at the age of 66. He was created
15th lifetime Meijin (or grand champion) in 1976 and died
in 1992 at the age of 69. This was in his 45th
consecutive season as either an "A" class
player or as Meijin. In chess, this would be the
equivalent of being World Champion, or a World
Championship candidate, for 45 years. Additionally, he
holds the record for the most number of games player in a
career, 2,214 and the most career wins, 1,433.
Go Seigen
Go Seigen was the strongest player in the
oriental game of go from 1940 to 1955. Born in Fukien
Province, China, he emigrated to Japan and vanquished all
the Japanese Grand Champions in a series of set matches.
Go experts regard him as the greatest genius in the
history of their game. Go Seigen achieved one of the
dreams of all Mind Sports champions, in that he defeated
every major opponent who confronted him on even terms.
This forced them into a situation where they could only
hope to compete against him with a chance of success
while being given odds. Not just a great player, he was
also a revolutionary theorist of the openings, developing
the New Fuseki, which completely overturned conventional
theory in go during the 1930s.
Hu RongHua
Hu RongHua won the XiangQi Championship
for the first time in 1960 aged 15, thus creating the
record for the youngest ever champion in that Mind Sport.
In 1985, at the age of 40, he added the record for
becoming the oldest champion too! Absolutely the greatest
player of Chinese chess of all-time, Hu RongHua logged an
unprecedented sequence of ten consecutive victories in
the championship during his dominant years. The best
Chinese chess players come exclusively from mainland
China, and the Chinese National Championship may safely
be considered as equivalent to the World Championship.
Ely Culbertson
Contract bridge was invented in 1925, but
within the space of a mere six years bridge fever had
swept America. The extraordinary and immediate growth of
the game was largely due to Culbertson, one of the
strangest and most flamboyant characters ever known in
the games-playing world. In 1929 he founded the magazine
The Bridge World, which is still a leading authority. His
many textbooks became best-sellers and he commanded an
amazing $10,000 a week for radio broadcasts on the game.
In 1930 he led an American team to England to play the
first ever international match. Culbertson won the "Bridge
Battle of the Century" in a 75-hour contest against
Sidney Lenz in 1931. This success made Culbertson a
dollar millionaire three times over. He went on to
establish a sort of private fiefdom over bridge, which
has never been equalled. Culbertson, like Kasparov,
transformed success at his chosen Mind Sport into giant
personal wealth. He lived on a private estate in a 45-room
house, with several miles of parks, lighted roads,
greenhouses, cottages, lakes and an enclosed swimming
pool. He always had caviar for tea!
Dominic O'Brien
Dominic O'Brien is the
overwhelmingly dominant force in the Mind Sport of memory
testing and performance. He has been joint winner of the
Brain of the Year title, awarded by the Brain Trust
Charity, and has won the World Memory Championship on
three occasions. O’Brien can number amongst his
feats an ability to memorise 780 shuffled cards in just
one hour, a single shuffled pack in under 40 seconds and
a 1,000 digit random number in 60 minutes.
Now we enumerate the criteria for awarding the ultimate laurels:
Criteria for establishing Dominance in Mind Sports:
1 The number of players playing the particular game.
2 The strength of the top players.
3 The complexity of the game.
4 The record of the player in question.
5 The duration of time at the top.
6 The opinions of those who are the champions' closest rivals.
In spite of their superlative achievements, none of
Hu RongHua, Culbertson, Oyama Yasuharu or Go Seigen ever
faced the test of extended battle against a giant, tireless
number-crunching computer, as Kasparov and Tinsley did.
While, in Dominic O'Brien's chosen sphere of memory
challenge, contests against a computer would simply be
inappropriate. We must therefore narrow the field down
to Kasparov and Dr Tinsley.
When assessing the relative claims of
Kasparov and Dr Tinsley it should be noticed that there
are more draughts players in the world (500 million) than
there are chessplayers (350 million). However, there is a
distinctly higher number of top chessplayers, and chess
certainly has the lead in terms of the quantity of young
players taking up the game as a profession. As to the
relative complexity of chess and draughts, chess
according to our research, has 11 skill levels, while
draughts has 8, a clear lead to chess. Kasparov has
dominated chess as no other player ever has, and has
continually put his title on the line to challengers, but
Dr Tinsley essentially maintained himself at the top,
dominating all aspects of the game, including knowledge,
opening, middlegame and endgame theory, brilliance,
creativity, speed and marathon playing for a total of 43
years. If Kasparov has ambitions to duplicate Tinsley’s
span as the undisputed top player, he will have to stay
World Champion until the year 2028, and he will have to
improve his record against the world's best computers!
IQ Test Solutions
1. Whale. The whale is the only mammal.
2. 90, 93. The numbers alternately increase by 3 or double.
3. Hermes. All the others are planets in the solar system.
4. Optics. Acoustics is the science of sound, optics of light.
5. 39. Each subsequent number is obtained by
doubling the previous one and then subtracting a
number which increments by one each time (e.g.
3x2 - 1 = 5; 5x2 - 2 = 8; 8x2 - 3 = 13 etc.)
6. Aristotle. All the others are composers.
7. Rio de Janeiro. Rio is in the southern hemisphere.
All the others are in the northern hemisphere.
8. 197. All the other numbers are perfect squares.
9. J. If the letters are replaced by their position
in the alphabet, we get the sequence 2, 5, 10, 17, 26.
Each of these numbers is a square number plus one.
10. 22. The upper row numbers increment
by 2, 3 and 4. The lower row by 3, 5 and 7.
Now check your score against the following chart:
Correct answers 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10
IQ rating 82 90 98 106 115 124 133 142 151 160
Scoring 100 is average, while 130 is in the genius range
(see chapter 1 of the book). Kasparov took a similar test
and registered an IQ of 135.
|
