Up until Thursday, the post received over 50,000 likes and 40,000 shares. (Photo via Weibo)
A head-scratching criminal investigation test posted by the Jiangsu Internet Police on its social media account last Thursday went viral online, stumping numerous Chinese netizens.
Although only 10 questions were included in the paper, netizens barely got any clues to getting the right answer as the questions were too unusual.
The first question directly asked "Which one is the right answer?" with the choices of A, B, C and D, following by the second question "What is answer of the fifth question?" However, the fifth question asked "Which of the following question has the same answer to this question?"
This paper soon piqued the interest of Chinese netizens, stumping many in the process.
The Jiangsu Internet Police clarified the next day on the Chinese social media platform Weibo that the paper was actually designed by a high school student.
The test designer, Yang Yuchen, who is currently a university student majoring in math, told Beijing Youth Daily that he designed the paper during high school in 2014 to serve as an entrance test to the Reasoning Society in his high school.
Yang said that he spent 15 minutes to come up with the whole set of questions and spent another 30 minutes to double-check the questions to make sure that there was only one correct answer to each question.
Many students who took part in the test found the paper so difficult and complained. However, Yang aimed to detect future senior executives for society, who he deemed should have excellent logical thinking.
To correctly solve the questions, Yang pointed out that the 10 questions should be taken as one question, because each question is related to another. He said the right solution was to start from the third question and make logical inferences step by step to reach the final answer.
Up until Thursday, the post had received over 50,000 likes and 40,000 shares.
"Only five seconds before I saw this paper, I had the dream of becoming a criminal investigation police officer," a Weibo commenter lamented, which gained almost 10,000 likes.
"At first glance, I thought it must be a joke, but soon I found that it wasn't," another Weibo user wrote.
Jiangsu Internet Police comforted netizens by saying that the difficult test was not an official test to becoming a criminal investigator, and encouraged those who were eager to join the police to stick to their dreams.
