stupid test questions — ten i collected and answered with care

i wrote ten of them by hand on a napkin and then walked through each one to figure out what they were measuring. nothing measurable, mostly. one asked which color my soul was. i said cream, like a wall. the test counted that as wrong. the test does not understand walls. ten questions follow, each disarmed.

i am writing this from my desk on a tuesday at 2:47pm. carla is upstairs in the all-hands on the third floor, which buys me about an hour, give or take a coffee, and i intend to spend that hour walking through stupid test questions like a man who has been asked to defend his own household against a clipboard.

the napkin is still here. the napkin is the source document. i transferred it to a sticky note for dignity, then back to the napkin for tone. that is the kind of decision a stupid test cannot capture, and i suspect that is the point.

before we go further, i should say where this fits. i covered the larger frame in what stupid actually means as a word, which is the pillar i keep walking back to. this post is narrower. this post is about what happens when a quiz, written by a stranger, asks you ten questions and then mails you a personality.

1. stupid test questions, why the format breeds them

the stupid test questions format is a closed loop. someone writes ten prompts. someone else clicks them. a result is generated. the result is shareable. the prompts must therefore be either (a) too easy, so everyone passes, or (b) too vague, so everyone is “rare”. in either case, the prompts cannot be real. real questions are boring. boring does not share. so the test breeds prompts that look pointed but are, on inspection, just a man named stefan in a vest asking you to identify forest floor as a flavor.

i know stefan. i met stefan at a wine tasting two months ago. stefan did not call it a test. stefan called it an experience. but when stefan asked the room which one we liked best, and the room had to choose, that was a test. when i said “the third one” because three is a confident number, and stefan said “interesting” the way a doctor says interesting when the x-ray comes back wrong, that was a result.

this is the format. this is the trap. (this is, by the way, the seventh microwave i have killed, if we are counting tests by appliances; the napkin is aware.)

the further problem is that the prompt-writer never has to defend the prompt. the prompt sits there in a clean font, unanswerable, eternal. the napkin, at least, is honest. the napkin has a coffee ring.

2. question one through five, with my answers

question 1. “what color is your soul.” i said cream. the test wanted blue, gold, or red. cream was not on the rubric. cream is, however, the wall of my apartment, the inside of a good envelope, and the third yoga mat which is still under my couch from 2023, possibly evolving. the test marked me wrong. the test does not understand walls. i submit cream, and i stand by it.

question 2. “you find a wallet on the street. what do you do.” the rubric expected “return it”. i said “i look at it for a while, then i hand it to a man who looks more responsible than me, then i go home and worry about the man.” the test marked me wrong. the test wanted heroism. i provided logistics. logistics is, in my experience, more honest.

question 3. “if you could have any superpower.” the rubric wanted flight or invisibility. i said “answering the phone the first time it rings, every time, like a person without debts.” the test marked this as a non-answer. the test does not know me.

question 4. “are you smart or hardworking.” this is the false choice format. the rubric wanted hardworking, because hardworking is the polite shareable answer. i said “neither, i am consistent at being seven minutes late and i have made it work.” the test marked me as inconclusive. inconclusive is, frankly, my brand.

question 5. “would you rather be respected or loved.” i said respected by people i can avoid, loved by people i can’t. the rubric wanted one word. i submitted a paragraph. the test does not accept paragraphs. (another mark in the wrong column. the napkin is filling up.)

3. question six through ten, with my answers

question 6. “pick a number between one and ten.” this is the ambush. the test wants seven. everyone picks seven. i picked four, because four is what the microwave said the last time i tried to heat something stupid, and four feels honest in the way that seven feels rehearsed. the test counted four as creative. the test thinks creativity is anything other than seven. the test is, in this regard, also seven.

question 7. “describe yourself in three words.” the rubric wants three adjectives. i wrote “tired, fond, late.” the test wanted “driven, curious, kind.” driven is a car word. curious is a kid word. kind is what you say at a funeral about a man you didn’t know well.

question 8. “what is your spirit animal.” i said the kettle on the office counter that nobody empties. it whistles when it is finished. it scalds the next person. it is, in spirit, me on a thursday. the test had no rubric for kitchen appliances. the test should have a rubric for kitchen appliances.

question 9. “what would you do with a million dollars.” the rubric wanted travel, charity, or business. i said “i would pay back dave the three hundred i owe him, then i would buy a new microwave with intention rather than panic, then i would walk into the kitchen and stare at the rest of it for a week.” the test does not have a column for staring. the test should have a column for staring.

question 10. “what’s your hot take.” this one i answered cleanly. ignorance is, in this case, financial therapy. the rubric did not know what to do with that. the rubric is, by design, allergic to honesty. the rubric prefers takes about pineapple. you know this; the_stefan in the wine vest also prefers takes about pineapple, because pineapple is a controlled disagreement, and disagreement, in stefan’s hands, is a marketing tool.

THE NAPKIN. WAS. THE TEST.

4. why the wrong answer is sometimes the better one

the moron-shaped point i am building toward — and yes, i mean it as a category, a moron is a category we all rotate through, see also the longer piece on what moron actually means in a sentence — is that wrong, in a stupid test, is often more truthful than right. right is shareable. right is the rubric. wrong is the actual man at the actual desk on an actual tuesday with an actual napkin. there is a reason the test does not want him. he ruins the post.

let me say this clearly, and you can write it on a napkin yourself.

which brings us back to the napkin. the napkin says cream. the napkin says four. the napkin says the kettle. the napkin says ignorance, in this case. the napkin is not on the leaderboard. the napkin is not trending. the napkin is, however, true, in the way only a napkin in front of an idiot at a desk can be.

and if you have ever sat through one of these tests and felt, afterwards, smaller than when you started, the longer piece on why these tests leave you feeling stupid covers the mechanism better than i can here. it is the same machine, just with a better pulpit.

5. verdict — the test fails the questions, not me

so. ten stupid test questions. ten answers that were marked wrong. one napkin that is now slightly translucent with coffee. one all-hands meeting upstairs that should be wrapping up in eleven minutes. one idiot at a desk who feels, on balance, lighter.

here is what i learned, presented like findings, because findings is the format that makes this post a post and not just a man complaining about quizzes.

finding one: a stupid test fails because the rubric is shareable and the truth is not. finding two: cream is a soul color, and anyone who tells you otherwise has not stared at a wall long enough. finding three: the wrong answer is the one with the fingerprint on it. finding four: stefan, in the vest, would have failed every one of these questions, and stefan would have called that a result.

finding five, and this is the one i want on the napkin in pen: i am not stupid because the test said so. i am, on inspection, slow in some areas and fast in others, late by seven minutes consistently, and quietly fond of a kettle that scalds. the test does not have a column for any of that. so the test, as i see it, fails the questions. i don’t.

if you want one piece of pop culture to anchor this — and you do, because pop culture is the only honest rubric — the small philosopher in the cheers ensemble at the corner of the bar answered every question with a story that did not match the question, and was, by miles, the smartest person on the show. that’s the rubric. that’s the form. that is what a stupid test cannot capture.