The Remote Associates (RAT) and Close Associates (CAT) Tests

The Remote Associates Test (RAT) is a test used to determine a person’s creative potential. When given a collection of three seemingly unrelated words, subjects are asked to supply a fourth word that is somehow related to each of the three stimulus words. For example, if you were given the words cottage, swiss, and cake, you’d answer cheese, because when combined with the three stimuli, you get cottage cheese, swiss cheese, and cheesecake.

To try your hand at one of these tests, you can head to remote-associates-test.com, or you can just keep on reading.

The verdict is out as to whether a high score on the RAT actually means you’re more creative. But what’s not in doubt is how much I love to solve, and to create, these items. It’s a good game for long car rides, and my wife, sons, and I can amuse ourselves for hours by creating and sharing them with one another.

For your enjoyment, I present the following mathematical RAT test: The fourth word related to the three stimulus words in each set is a common math term. Enjoy!

1. attack / acute / fish
2. inner / around / full
3. phone / one / mixed
4. powers / rotational / point
5. up / on / hot
6. tipping / blank / selling
7. even / duck / couple
8. black / Bermuda / love
9. inkhorn / limits / short
10. sub / hour / tolerance
11. world / television / infinite
12. ball / camp / data
13. Dracula / head / sheep
14. field / dead / stage
15. town / off / meal
16. air / hydro / geometry
17. common / X / fudge
18. key / bodily / dis
19. disaster / 51 / grey
20. ball / S / hairpin

The Close Associates Test (CAT) is a similar, yet completely fictitious, test that I just made up. Each item on a CAT test contains three words which do not appear to be unrelated in the least; in fact, they are so closely related that finding the fourth word they have in common is somewhat trivial. The following mathematical CAT test will not measure your creativity, though it might reasonably determine the depth of your mathematical vocabulary. Good luck!

1. acute / obtuse / right
2. scalene / equilateral / isosceles
3. sine / logistic / regression
4. real / irrational / whole
5. proper / improper / reduced
6. convergent / infinite / divergent
7. in / circum / ortho
8. Pythagorean / De Moivre’s / Ramsey’s
9. exponential / differential / Diophantine
10. convex / concave / regular
11. golden / common / test
12. square / cube / rational

RAT Answers:

1. angle
2. circle
3. number
4. axis
5. line
6. point
7. odd
8. triangle
9. term
10. zero
11. series
12. base
13. count
14. center
15. square
16. plane
17. factor
18. function
19. area
20. curve

CAT Answers:

1. angle
2. triangle
3. curve
4. number
5. fraction
6. series
7. center
8. theorem
9. equation
10. polygon
11. ratio
12. root (or number)

Feel free to submit more triples for the RAT or CAT test in the comments.