Guess every remaining question before the clock stops
On a speeded aptitude test, stop working with about thirty seconds left and put an answer on every question you have not reached. None of these tests penalise a wrong answer, so a blank is the only choice that is guaranteed to score nothing.
of the final fifth of a speeded test is left blank.
Among 509 attempts on the CCAT, Wonderlic, PI Cognitive and Cubiks Logiks where the candidate used at least half the clock. Among the 466 who ran it down to 90% or more it is 62.1%.
Share of questions left blank, by position in the test. Speeded tests, 509 attempts.
What this means for you
- The last ten questions are where your score leaks, not the hard ones in the middle. 0.2% of the first fifth goes unanswered against 58.4% of the last.
- A blank is a guaranteed zero. A guess on a four-option question is worth a quarter of a mark, and nothing is deducted for getting it wrong.
- It is worth more than it sounds. On our Cubiks set that is 10% of a typical score. On the CCAT, 7%.
What were your blanks worth?
Guessing them was worth about 1.8 marks, or 6% on a typical 28.3 score for this test.
At the measured average of 0.2 marks per blank on our PI Cognitive set, where items carry four or five options. None of these tests penalise a wrong answer.
It is the clock, not the subject
| Test | Seconds per question | Left blank |
|---|---|---|
| Cubiks Logiks | 14 | 24.4% |
| CCAT | 18 | 20.5% |
| Wonderlic | 14 | 20.3% |
| PI Cognitive | 14 | 18.8% |
| IBEW aptitude | 84 | 7.9% |
| Ramsay Mechanical | 33 | 4.9% |
| EIAT | 60 | 2.7% |
| Watson-Glaser | 45 | 0.4% |
| McQuaig | 18 | 0.2% |
Verbal, numerical, abstract, mechanical: the subject barely moves the number. McQuaig is the case worth sitting with. It allows 18 seconds a question, the same as the CCAT, and runs at 0.2% blank against the CCAT’s 20.5%, because it is quick word and number association rather than multi-step reasoning. The clock is decisive relative to the work each question demands, and most candidates never work out which kind of test they are sitting until it is too late.
What we measured
| On record | 1438 |
| Re-grade disagreed, discarded | 555 |
| Empty, discarded | 25 |
| Used under half the clock, discarded | 161 |
| Analysed | 697 |
We did not exclude people who failed to finish. Not finishing is the finding. Filtering on it would mean selecting on the outcome being measured.
Half the clock and not 90%, deliberately. A 90% threshold selects for time pressure, so it is unfair to the generous-clock group: it removes exactly the people who found the test easy and handed in early. At half, the comparison is fair and still decisive, 58.4% against 14.2%.
Withdrawn 21 September 2026: an earlier cut claimed that rushing degrades the answers you do give. Tested within speeded tests only, candidates who finished with time to spare declined 27.6 points against 31.3 for the time-pressured. That is a difficulty ramp, not the clock. Full method and withdrawals.
Cite this
“On speeded aptitude tests, 58.4% of questions in the final fifth are never answered (PrepClubs Research, 2026, n=509).”
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Edition 2, 2026-09-21. Edition 1 reported 59.0% on 858 attempts, before the “did they actually sit it” filter and with a control group the filter had biased.