by Alan Stillson
Call it brain trust: Just as most adults tend to think they look five years younger than their age, we'd all like to believe our IQ is, say, 10 points higher than it really is. Therein lies the appeal of this puzzle book written by a member of Mensa (whose adherents have IQs of 132 or more) and tested by 104 of his fellow smarties. The good news is that even they answered only 55 percent of the puzzles correctly. While it's easy to figure out the original name behind the movie title Greetings, Handtruck, how about Solar Satellite of Members of the Pongidae Family) It doesn't take a rocket scientist to say what's next in the sequence M, V, E, M, J, S, U, N, _, but it takes Mensa material to solve A, T, G, C, L, V, L, S, S, C, A, _. Not to worry. Even Stillson admits that acing the test "doesn't guarantee success in anything else, and doing not so well is no sure sign of trouble." (Perseus, $10) Answers: Hello, Dolly! ; Planet of the Apes; P (for Pluto); P (for Pisces).
Bottom Line: Calisthenics for the nimble-noodled
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