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2025 is officially in the rearview mirror. But how much of it actually stayed in your head?
Every year leaves behind a distinct cognitive footprint. After the headlines fade, certain fragments remain: a delayed video game release, a snap election in Europe, a celebrity scandal that dominated social media.
Some people retain these details relatively effortlessly. Others remember the feel of the year, but the facts blur together.
Do you want to see how locked in you were to the world's headlines in 2025? Take my 2025 "News IQ" Test to see if you can beat the average.
Wait, Is This a Real IQ Test?
Let's get the disclaimer out of the way: no.
Traditional IQ tests are designed to measure "G" -- general cognitive ability, including pattern recognition and abstract reasoning. To do this well, they deliberately minimize cultural knowledge. This quiz does the opposite.
Knowing that GTA VI was delayed or identifying the host city of a major political summit doesn't measure raw intelligence. Instead, it taps into crystallized knowledge: the information you've accumulated within a specific time and place.
I call it "News IQ" as shorthand. What the test actually captures is something closer to contextual awareness: a snapshot of how engaged you were with the world over the past 12 months.
What Your Score Actually Reflects
When you take this test, or similarly styled tests, you're not just answering trivia questions. You're indirectly revealing patterns across several cognitive dimensions, such as:
- Attention allocation. You can't remember what you never noticed. Did you direct attention toward current events or did you intentionally tune them out?
- Episodic memory. This is the brain's ability to place events in context. Can you remember when something happened, not just that it happened?
- Motivational relevance. We remember what aligns with our interests. A tech enthusiast may ace the product questions; a political junkie may dominate the election headlines.
- General memory capacity. Like it or not, some people have bigger and better memories than others (think Ken Jennings).
The Illusion Of Explanatory Depth
One reason I like tests like this is that they expose a subtle cognitive bias. We often feel well-informed simply because we recognize headlines. But when we're asked for specifics, like names, dates or locations, that confidence tends to collapse.
Psychologists refer to this as the "illusion of explanatory depth," a bias that shows up everywhere from politics to personal finance. We mistake familiarity for understanding.
This quiz sits at that tension point. The questions feel recognizable, but some of the answers may be just out of reach.
Interpreting Your Results
If you score high, it suggests strong contextual awareness. You likely engaged analytically with the news and maintained structured information habits throughout the year.
If you score lower, there's no reason to panic. It doesn't signal a lack of intelligence. More often, it reflects where your cognitive energy was allocated. Maybe that was toward your career, your relationships or (like me) simply protecting your mental health from an exhausting news cycle.
In psychology, context matters more than rank. The more interesting question isn't "How smart am I?" but rather: "How did I engage with the world this year and how will I engage with it in the future?"