First try, based on the name. Given the thread title, sterilize me.

(I qualify for Mensa, I have minors in computer programming and math, and I've been a coder, and yet I solved it in an eyeblink. Maybe my major being English had something to do with my being the exception to the rule.)

I did it for 5 minutes and gave up in frustration and I also qualify for Mensa.

and boy oh boy does that say it all or what.

When people want to find out how intelligent they are, listening to someone else is not an option.

I don't have more than 5 minutes of my time to devote to searching for a pattern in an inane puzzle.

ok, i got it. i had the right idea yesterday, there was just one variable i was missing that was screwing me up about every 3rd time. i'm usually really good at brainteasers, but this one had me for awhile. i'm a dumbass now i guess.

I'm with Radar on this one. The puzzle is an amusement, a distraction. Purely for entertainment. I happened to have a few more minutes of time available to play around with it, and I got it. I'm sure Radar would get it too, given enough time.

No good can come from the puzzle, other than novelty value. Why waste time on it if you don't have enough time?

I got it in about 30 seconds but my 'brilliant' husband never did figure it out. I guess it's true...the smarter you are, the harder it is.:rolleyes:

So are any of you Mensa "qualifiers" actually members of Mensa? (I ask because I went to a meeting with a friend once & I could imagine any less interesting way to pass my time, and I was just wondering if maybe it was that one chapter.)

The outcome of one single puzzle doesn't say anything about your intelligence, but the study of different kinds of puzzles may help one to think creatively or to understand one's approaches to life.

In this case, there's is an interesting lesson involved for about half the people. If you don't get it after one minute, I think you may get frustrated and try harder. This "try harder" does not cut it for this problem, because it forces you to consider the problem along the same paths you have always used, just working harder. Then you get really frustrated because the problem just doesn't solve that way!

At that point, the solvers know, the right way to handle it is to relax and think differently.

I could not have solved this problem prior to 1992. In 1992 I finished working 2 years of Unix telephone tech support. This time turned me into a problem-solver. Primarily it turned me into a LISTENER. You have to PAY ATTENTION to the person describing the problem, because that is usually where you get the most clues.

Anyone who hasn't gotten the puzzle yet, it doesn't really speak to your intelligence. Go back to it, I swear this is useful. Imagine that the question in the puzzle is being asked of you by a four-year-old child. If you still don't get it, LOOK AWAY from the puzzle. Stop, and imagine a four-year-old looking at the puzzle and asking you the question. Why would a four-year-old ask that question? Picture the kid asking you the question. Is it a boy or a girl? Why would they ask that question? Imagine what the question would mean if you were four and didn't know that the dots represented numbers.

The people who got it right away are missing out because they don't get the free lesson.

/end professor mode

only if you are attracted to intelligent women.

No. I was invited to join once, and I went to a meeting with a friend and it was truly boring as hell. It was a bunch of nerdy guys sitting around trying to compare IQ's and who couldn't seem to act like normal people. They wanted to impress each other by flexing thier intellectual muscles.

I never got to meet the hot Mensa women that were in Playboy, but my guess is no matter how hot they were, I wouldn't like them if they couldn't get over themselves.

My problem is that I was looking at the puzzle as some sort of math and/or numerical patterns problem... I was trying to detect patterns, watching to see if the order of the dice had any relevance... basically looking at it all wrong. When my pattern-searching yielded little, I threw out all of my data and looked at it again, and got it almost instantly.

It's just perspective.

They probably were able to think for themselves too.

The woman who is acting as the coaster is a member of Mensa.

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