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IQ Test fails “Obsequious”

So what's the meaning of the word "Obsequious' anyway?

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Last night’s National IQ Test on Channel Nine flunked out on one of its questions when it asked viewers to select the meaning of the word “Obsequious.”

Nine incorrectly gave the multiple choice answer to mean “Nasty” instead of “Submissive.”

The definition of the word according to Dictionary.com is:
1. characterized by or showing servile complaisance or deference; fawning: an obsequious bow.
2. servilely compliant or deferential: obsequious servants.
3. obedient; dutiful.

Confused viewers took to Twitter to correct Nine’s answer.

One reader also says the show misspelled “obsolete.”

59 Responses

  1. Question 14 is wrong. The car starts East, does 4 left turns which puts it back to East. Turns RIght(South), Left(East), and finally RIght(South). They have it wrong, the answer is South! you would think they could actually get the correct answers considerinig it is supposed to be an IQ test!. Also Adrian is right, question 28 in the sudoko questions there are 2 answers that are possible with the layout presented. If you draw it on paper you will find both 12 and 17 are in the top row and can be in either position as the numbers below can also be in either position. Very poor channel 9

  2. I wish there had been a question about the Holden car: can you rip CMs, connect an Ipod etc or how many channel 9 programs were mentioned in the last segment, 2&1/2 Men, Big Bang, Golf… The cross promotion made me a bit sick.

  3. You’re quite right Adrian, on both counts…

    Q14 the online direction answer should be South (since you are initially facing North). However, on TV show you are told that you are initially facing East (if my memory is correct). Q28 both A.12 and D.17 are correct answers – for the test I quickly answered A by process of elimination (16 squares with B, C numbers already used) & crude calculation that 12 was good.

    I don’t blame Nine as much as the “professor”; imagine getting Q18 obsequious wrong; “nasty”. Dictionary anyone. I bet his EQ is through the roof !?

  4. As a sub-editor for a metropolitan newspaper I can confirm that Nine certainly got the pretentious question wrong as well as just the obsequious one. I couldn’t believe my eyes when the “answers” came up so I rushed for my dictionaries. Then at work today, a brain’s trust of dozens of sub-editing staff (with decades and decades of years of experience in the English language between us) all agreed the answers were plain Wrong. Not partially wrong. Completely wrong. And “nasty”? Please.

    I’d also question the erroneous instructions issued in the so-called Sudoku test. Eddie explained it as — the numbers on lines had to add up to 15. He did not say only in that particular example. Many a viewer unfamiliar with these numerical line games would have been trying to add up every question’s puzzle to equal 15. Bloody annoying.

  5. What a joke! I watched parts of this whilst flicking between it and Iron Chef. I can assure you the real Mensa IQ test is much more rigorous and difficult than last night’s Nine sitcom cross promotion, oops…. supposed IQ test. I sat for the official Mensa IQ test several years ago. It is conducted under strict exam room conditions, goes for three-and-a-half hours and each section is timed by a supervisor with a stopwatch. The questions are a hell of a lot more difficult, I can assure you. Also, Mensa never tells you your score, ie 100, 120 etc. You are only told at what percentile of the population your test result puts you in. If you score at the 98th percentile, that means you are in the top 2% of the population, so are eligible for Mensa membership. I scored at the 94th percentile (top 6% of population), so was ineligible to join. If you are interested in getting your IQ tested properly, I strongly advise doing the Mensa test, though it is rigorous! There are Mensa branches in all states.

    What was with the stupid categories in the studio audience? WAGS???? Dear God, shoot me now. Impersonators???? Lame and stupid, stupid, stupid. No wonder it got bombed in the ratings. And is anyone really surprised that several questions were wrong? After all, it is Channel 9 we’re talking about.

  8. @Marky Mark

    “Introduce” has the closest meaning to precede of the four options they gave, so even by process of elimination it’s possible to get that one correct.

    Precede –verb (used with object)
    1. to go before, as in place, order, rank, importance, or time.
    2. to introduce by something preliminary; preface: to precede one’s statement with a qualification.

  10. @Lindsay – the ‘sudoku’ puzzles actually had little to do with sudoku, they apparently just decided to call them that because they involved placing numbers in a grid. A Sudoku is a logic problem and doesn’t involve any arithmetic – you could replace the numbers 1-9 in a Sudoku with the letters A-I, or the greek letters alpha-iota, or any other set of nine symbols, and you’d have the same puzzle. The ‘sudoku’ questions on the test last night were basically about rapid addition and subtraction, and so calling them ‘sudoku’ only served to confuse people about what they were supposed to be doing.

  12. @aBCKid the answer to “2+4×6” is actually 26 not 36. This is because you do multiplications before you do addition. So it is actually “2 + (4 x 6)” = 26. However, aside from that I must agree it was a crock. I watched it for 10 minutes and then got bored so I gave up.

  14. Sorry ABCkid but according to the mathematical order of operations, you must perform the multiplication first and then the addition in the absence of brackets. Thus 2+4×6 = 2 + 24 = 26 = channel 9s answer.

  19. @aBCKid: I thought the answer was 36, too. However, there is a hierarchy of the order mixed math calculations are performed.

    1. Perform all calculations in parentheses first, working left to right. (None in this test)
    2. Perform all calculations on exponential numbers, working left to right. (None in this test)
    3. Perform all multiplication and division calculations, working left to right.
    4. Perform all addition and subtraction calculations, working left to right.

    I found the info here:
    ehow.com/how_2040917_calculate-math-problems-with-order.html

  20. Obsequious was a major blunder but Pretentious was almost as bad. Pretentious means ‘fake’ as much as it means ‘conceited’. To be pretentious is to assume or exaggerate traits which are not necessarily natural. Therefore it is fake. Fake is more correct since pretension is nearly always fake but is not always conceited.
    Sudoku is a learned skill so it’s quite ridiculous to have sudoku type questions in such a test. Someone who does sudoku puzzles every day is much more likely to get them correct.

  23. @aBCKid…sorry but it’s back to school for you. You’re forgetting the order of operations rule of Maths equations: BODMAS -Brackets Of Division Multiply Addtion Subtraction.

    2+4×6 if broken down correctly is 4 x 6 Then + 2

    Unfortunately Eddie was right on this one.

  24. @ABCKid – sorry, but there is an order of operations in mathematics, just to avoid ambiguities like this. Multiplication is always done before addition unless the sum is enclosed in parentheses.

    So (2+4)×6 = 36 but 2+4×6 = 2+(4×6) = 26.

    See here for more: en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_of_operations

  25. I just keep thinking about the false economy of getting rid of (intelligent) editors, proof-readers and test runs of campaigns. It can’t be as expensive as all the ribbing Eddie’s getting today. *grin*

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