"Which school are you from? At least knock before you come in, okay?" A sharply dressed girl sitting next to the head of the conference table spoke directly to her.

David Carter didn't know the girl either—she must be from another school attending the meeting. There was no need for her to say anything; as she turned to close the meeting room door, the student council president from her own school, William Scott, had already spoken up.

"We started the meeting early. David came later and didn't know."

"Sorry, sorry." David Carter went along with it, said her piece, and quickly ran to sit next to William Scott.

"David Carter was the one who wrote the questions for the last IQ competition."

After she sat down, William Scott pointed at her and introduced her.

Then William Scott introduced her to the rest of the attendees. Just as she had guessed, the people present were representatives from other universities in the college town.

When he got to the sharply dressed girl, William Scott emphasized, "Grace Bennett, head of the Academic Department of Baicao University Student Council."

Baicao—her school's archrival.

As David Carter thought this, she nodded at Grace Bennett as a greeting.

Because of her entrance and the introductions, the meeting paused for a moment. Some people started drinking water. Taking the opportunity, William Scott leaned over and lowered his voice to ask her, "How's your dad's health?"

"Alzheimer's," David Carter replied.

"What?" William Scott's eyes widened, unable to hide his shock for a moment.

David Carter nodded.

"What are you going to do?"

"I don't know either." She patted the boy's shoulder, signaling him to focus on the meeting and not overthink it.

William Scott immediately sat up straight, still a bit dazed. During this brief pause, Grace Bennett seized control of the meeting.

"Since everyone has no objections to the multiple-choice questions, let's move on to the long-answer questions. Questions 30 to 60 are the long-answer questions we've prepared. I'll need everyone to help select from them..."

After Grace Bennett finished, everyone started flipping through the printed papers in front of them.

Since David Carter arrived late, William Scott was already sharing a set of materials with another committee member. She had an empty desk in front of her, which made things a bit awkward.

Just then, a thin stack of printed papers was pushed over from the side.

David Carter turned and saw that it was the girl sitting to her right who had quietly pushed them over. The girl had a small face and big eyes, wearing an oversized school uniform. When David Carter looked at her twice, she actually got a bit shy and avoided her gaze.

David Carter scooted closer to the girl, tapped the back of her hand, and whispered, "Thank you."

Wow, the girl actually blushed.

...

David Carter didn't tease the cute girl and started seriously looking at the questions.

But before she could flip through more than a couple of pages, she heard Grace Bennett say, "Since David Carter from Sanwei University is so experienced, let's start with Carter."

The sound of pages turning in the meeting room stopped all at once.

She hadn't even finished going through the multiple-choice questions, so she was a bit helpless. "You want me to pick 10 long-answer questions, right?"

"Yes," Grace Bennett said, arms crossed.

"Then give me a minute."

"Is one minute enough?"

David Carter focused on the questions and didn't answer.

Organizing fun IQ competitions was a tradition in their college town. It was supposed to be simple: download some interesting IQ questions from the internet, the host university would screen them, and select some for the question bank. The schools would gather, discuss, and finally choose 20 multiple-choice and 10 long-answer questions as the final set. That was it.

But since the competition was held every year, the number of interesting IQ questions available online was dwindling, making the selection process harder and harder. What David Carter had in hand were the backup questions Baicao University had prepared this year—a total of 100 long-answer questions. She needed to pick 10 questions, ordered from easy to hard, to be used as the test questions.

As she thought, she finished reading all the long-answer questions Baicao University had selected, then looked up. "Shall I go ahead and say them?"

Grace Bennett: "You came late, so you can take a bit more time."

"It's fine." David Carter lowered her head, her finger sliding over the question numbers as she flipped pages and crisply called out, "31, 38, 44, 56, 58, 62, 63, 64, 70, 77..." After finishing, she paused and added, "Question 77 is great—it can be the final, most challenging question."

After she finished, the people from Baicao University looked a bit embarrassed.

Before Grace Bennett could say anything, another attendee spoke up, "That was fast. Did you really look at them carefully?"

"Well," David Carter thought for a moment and decided to be honest, "Actually, I've already gone through pretty much all the interesting IQ questions you can find online and offline last time..."

Instantly, everyone started flipping through their papers again.

Grace Bennett's expression grew even more unpleasant, but saying anything more would be undignified. She pressed her lips together and held back.

Soon, someone said, "Senior... the questions you picked are really good."

"The difficulty is very well balanced."

"But question 62..." another person began.

David Carter looked down.

Question 62 was a diagram problem, showing a simple mechanical arm and asking about the path of another point when the arm moved along a certain trajectory.

As a long-answer question, it did look pretty simple.

David Carter: "That's a Peaucellier–Lipkin linkage. You can swap it for a more complex transformation if you want."

A chorus of "ohhh" went around the meeting room.

After a while, someone suddenly asked, "Question 77, as the final question?"

"Does that even count as an IQ question? How do you even solve it? Any science majors want to weigh in?"