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Decades ago, I took the test for Mensa in front of an administrator who was a psychologist and gave me a "real IQ test". At one point, he took a jigsaw puzzle composed of eight to ten pieces and dropped it in front of me. I was to put the puzzle together as quickly as possible.

I immediately recognized the puzzle as an elephant and quickly pieced them together.

"Good!" he said. "I'll mark that as almost perfect."

"Almost perfect?" I exclaimed.

"Come on. You're not God, " he replied.






It is kind of like a tradition in France to not give perfect scores (20/20) to tests, especially in humanities. The idea is that there is no such thing as a perfect essay, and so, no perfect score.

Perfect scores are much more common in hard science and maths, where it is usually a simple matter of answering correctly to every question, but some teachers are still hesitant and may find some tiny imperfection to justify a "19/20".

I think it is becoming a thing of the past as perfect scores are becoming more common, but it was a time where getting a perfect 20/20 in philosophy for the baccalauréat was literally newsworthy, as in, it gets talked about on national news.




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