Can anyone answer this IQ test question?

I had to take a Caliper personality/IQ test today for a potential employer and came back frustrated by one question. Can anyone speculate on the answer? Here's the question.

Select the next number in the series:
C A R R

A: S
B: X
C: I
D: Y

There are several plausible answers. Does your test clearly imply that there should be only one?

My favourite would be "B : X".
In CARR only C is a number (100 in roman); in the proposed series the first roman number to come up is "B : X" (ten), then "C : I" (one).

So answer B for me.


Ponrauil

I *knew* Ponrauil would reply first on this

I'm a real 'alpha' (which means that because of the direction I chose in highschool, I mostly studied foreign languages and history), so I'd say D. Cause it makes the word 'carry'

I thought the same, except that the question asks which number, not letter (despite then listing letters) so presumably it is more complicated. If you take the letters and convert them into numbers based on their position in the alphabet you get 3 1 18 18 and I can see no pattern there, because 2 of them are the same it is too small a set to get any kind of pattern from.

Was it just mis-typed and it was supposed to say which letter and not which number?

Supposedly, there is only one correct answer. I think I spent too much time analyzing the question. Thanks for taking a shot at it.

Not a typo.....definitely said number, hence the confusion.

There are others who have wondered about the same thing. No definitive answer yet:
http://ask.metafilter.com/mefi/42605

There are also people who say that the word "number" is wrong and should be "letter", but I'm not sure. If we're to think the letters are numbers, then I'd go with Ponrauils explanation, but I also like "there are no numbers there, so it's 0. the next number is 1.".

Ice

How exactly is any answer one picks a clue to ones personality or intelligence?

Garbage I say.


All it says is that Ponrauil is too much of a geek sometimes () and Alex is the one I'd like to hire based on her answer .... she's clearly the most fun to work with and doesn't take things too seriously, hence, she allows herself to think about things in a not so conventional way and perhaps deliberately looks at problems from a different angle. Making it work any which way. She'll be able to work with all sorts of my 'difficult' clients as she seems to be able to just go with the flow and doesn't get hung up on technicalities.

There!

*blushes*

Don't put your money on that, though - I managed to piss off an US supplier of ours the other day

the answer is I


DUHHHHHHHHHHH