Mental Arithmetic Test

Each item shows a number and four expressions. One of the four equals the number: work it out in your head and tap it. The test starts with single-digit sums and times tables and works up to chains of three steps, but the numbers stay single digits throughout: it measures how fast you are at arithmetic, not how well you handle long calculations. Only whole numbers and the four basic operators appear, and where an expression has more than one step the brackets say which comes first, so there are no order-of-operations tricks.

Speed counts. There is no time limit and no penalty for guessing, but your score is your throughput: correct answers per minute, measured from the moment you begin to your last answer. A wrong guess costs a point; a slow right answer costs time, and so does a break, so do it in one sitting. The sixty items take most people five to ten minutes.

Items are drawn from a larger pool, so two people rarely see the same set and a retake is a fresh test rather than a memory check.

The four expressions in an item look alike and land close together, so checking the last digit or the rough size rarely settles it on its own. Accuracy and speed are also reported separately, and each block of items is broken out so you can see where you slow down.