Visual IQ test: every question is a picture

Most well-known IQ tests mix two kinds of question. Verbal questions ask what words mean or how ideas relate. Picture questions ask you to find a rule in shapes you have never seen. Psychologists call the second kind nonverbal or fluid reasoning, and it is what this test measures.

A picture test has a practical advantage. Your score does not depend on how much you read, which language you grew up with or which subjects you studied. That is why nonverbal tests are used for people who speak a different language from the test, for younger children and for some school screening. It also means a strong reader does not get a head start.

It has a limit too. A visual test measures one broad ability well, not your whole intelligence. Vocabulary, general knowledge and working memory are separate abilities that full tests such as the WAIS measure with other subtests. So a picture IQ test gives you a clean read of visual reasoning, and an incomplete read of everything else.

Three practice items in the same style as the test, from easy to medium. They are written for this page and are not test questions. No words needed: look for what changes and what stays the same.

The 25 questions come in five sets of five. Each set starts easy and ends hard.

Spatial items are often the slowest for people new to them, because turning a shape in your head takes practice. A tip that helps: track one corner or one dark half, not the whole shape.

Several professional tests are built entirely, or almost entirely, from pictures. They are given by trained examiners and scored against large norm samples. The LifeScore test borrows the format, not their items or norms.

The difference that matters most is norming. A professional test compares you with thousands of people of your age tested under the same conditions. An online test, ours included, is an estimate. Read more in our guide to Raven's Progressive Matrices and the Cattell Culture Fair test.

Picture puzzles reward a calm, systematic eye. These habits help on every set in the test.

• Name the features first. Shape, colour, size, shading, count, position and turn. Most puzzles change two or three of them and keep the rest fixed.
• Follow one feature at a time. Read the colours across a row, then down a column, before you even look at the shapes.
• Track a landmark when things turn. A dark half, a dot or one corner is far easier to follow than the whole shape.
• Count in groups. Two pairs is quicker to see than four separate shapes, and fewer counting slips means fewer wrong answers.
• Use the options to check, not to guess. Decide what the answer must look like, then find it. If two options both fit, a feature you have not checked yet will split them.

These are the same moves psychologists see in people who score highest on matrix tests: they break the problem into separate rules and keep track of each one, rather than staring at the whole picture and hoping it clicks.

• People whose first language is not English. The instructions are short and the puzzles carry no words.
• People with dyslexia or who read slowly. Reading speed does not eat into your time.
• Anyone who wants to measure reasoning, not knowledge. A picture test cannot reward a good memory for facts.
• Visual thinkers. If you have always found diagrams easier than paragraphs, this is the kind of test that plays fair with that.

It suits people less if they have a visual impairment that makes small shapes hard to see. A larger screen helps everyone: a laptop or tablet shows the shapes more clearly than a small phone.