How we score the matrix test
Most online IQ tests make up their own scale. Here is ours in plain words: where the puzzles come from, how the test finds your level, what your level means, and what we can't tell you yet.
Where the puzzles come from
Every puzzle comes from the Open Matrices Item Bank, a set of 220 pattern puzzles that researchers published in 2022, free for anyone to use. Before publishing, they measured how hard each puzzle is on 2,561 people who applied to German medical schools. So we know how hard a puzzle is before you ever see it.
We leave two out. One didn't measure cleanly, so we can't say how hard it is. The other is the sample puzzle we show you before you start, answer included, so it never appears in a real test. That leaves 218 puzzles we can give you.
Each puzzle is built from a small set of rules: Adding shapes, Taking away, Keeping what differs, Keeping what’s shared, Turning, One of each.
How the test adjusts to you
You start with three easy puzzles to warm up. After that, every answer picks the next puzzle to suit you: harder when you're getting them right, easier when you're not. We aim for puzzles you'd solve about 7 times in 10, so most feel within reach and a few feel tricky. That's how the test finds your level. Each answer narrows things down, and once we have what we need, or after 24 puzzles, the test ends. Answers given too fast to have read the puzzle don't count for or against you.
What your level means
Your result is a puzzle level from 1 to 10. Your level is the hardest band of puzzles you solve about 7 times in 10. Level 5 is where the middle of the med-school applicants sits, the group the puzzles were measured on. If you reach our hardest puzzles, your result reads "level N or higher", because there was nothing harder left to try.
We also tell you how you compare with those med-school applicants. That's a strong group, with an average age of 19 and well above average ability. So your comparison is with that group, and your report says so. Sitting below the middle of it is not the same as being below average.
Two things we can't tell you yet
An IQ-style score. That kind of score compares you with the general public, so it needs a comparison group that looks like the general public. We're building one. When it's big enough, we'll turn your existing result into an IQ-style score for you, free and with no retake.
A comparison with people your age. We don't ask your age on this test, so we can't. The personality profile does ask, and compares you with 619,150 people your age and sex who took the same questionnaire online. They chose to take it, so they aren't a random slice of the public, and that report says so plainly.
What this is not
It's not a clinical assessment, and it can't stand in for one. It measures reasoning with patterns you've never seen, which means finding the structure in something new. It says nothing about your knowledge, your judgement or your character, and it should never be used to make a decision about another person.