It began in 1994 with the Graduator. This unusual instrument consisted of an inventory of 300 guitar-related abilities (I am a composer and guitarist, and gave lessons at that time) to assess a guitarist's level. The Graduator was linked to a complex system that would convert any score profile out of 2 to the 300th possible to a guitar composition. This system existed on paper and its algorithms had to be worked out by hand.
In the course of several years thereafter I graded over a hundred guitarists, thus enabling some norming, but produced only one actual composition - that corresponds to the profile of my own 237 top score - because of the amount of work involved in working out the algorithms. I did perform this composition, called "For who loves truth the garrote called life is daily tightened a turn", once, and a very bad recording (bad in sound quality) remains, as do a practice recording and of course the score (sheet music).
Also in 1994, while working on the Graduator, I started designing intelligence tests which I called "A-1", "A-2" etc., "A" meaning Association test. My motivation was to make tests that could discriminate in the very high range, since I had been disappointed by the score reporting after my Mensa admission test in the Summer of 1993 which stopped at the 99th percentile and did not specify further.
The first nine Association tests were written with fountain pen on paper and never administered, but the best items I later reused. The A-10, a Netherlandic Association test typed on paper, was the first to be administered to a number of Netherlandic Mensa members (about 8). This was early 1995. After the A-10 followed several other, up to A-23, in both Netherlandic and English, and these proof tests would later lead to the Association subtest of the Long Test For Genius, existing in Netherlandic, English, French and German. One A-test, the A-22 in Netherlandic, remained in use in its own right as an easy self-scoring test.
In 1995 I was distributing the tests via ads in the Mensa International Journal, which drew a few hundred responses over the first few years, mostly from abroad. Since only few actually submitted answers and the scores were surprisingly low, I decided around June/July 1995 to design an easier and more conventional test to send to the many responders. This became the Short Test For Genius. Again, I got few submissions and scores were low, mostly 0 to 3 right out of over 40. There was however one very high score from a Netherlander in this period.
So in the Winter of 1995/1996 I went even lower and expanded the Short TFG, by combining it with the Association test and adding easier items to form the Long Test For Genius. Also I wrote out a contest for the Netherlandic version of it, awarding 2000 guilders - about $1300 then - to the highest scorer before the year 2000. The high scorer from the previous paragraph took this test as well. After that I kept corresponding with him and revealed the answers to the Short TFG to discuss them with him; the only time I ever revealed answers.
Meanwhile in 1995 I had joined the One-in-A-THousand Society, led by Ronald K. Hoeflin, and a year later published the English version of the Long TFG in its journal OATH, which brought in new submissions (the Mensa submissions from all over the world kept coming in too). Then in 1997 I created the Final Test and its Netherlandic counterpart the Laatste Test, consisting of verbal analogies only. The English version drew relatively many submissions (a few dozen) rapidly via Hoeflin's journals, but for the Netherlandic version very few came in. In general, there is little interest in my Netherlandic tests.
As the Final Test proved to be relatively easy, I made a harder sequel to it, the Test To End All Tests (Test Der Testen in Netherlandic). This was also more humouristic and appeared in the Upperland Satires, a series of satirical articles by me published in OATH. Around this time two of Hoeflin's readers, Bill Bultas and Darryl Miyaguchi, began to publish my materials on their web sites, which produced extra test submissions and interest in my work. After the Test To End All Tests I would produce one more verbal analogies test, Analogies #1.
Autumn 1997 I reached a pinnacle in my creative life with the Nemesis Test, my last typewriter-on-paper work and so hard it only drew two submissions in four years. Containing various types of items, it could be seen as a successor or sequel to the Test For Genius. Around the same time I founded the Glia Society (requirement: 99.9th %ile), with me and Bill Bultas as the first members. Late 1997/early 1998 I scored and normed the Chimera High Ability Riddle Test, designed by Bultas.
Late 1997 I got an old DOS computer with WordPerfect 5.1, and began to use that for my articles, the Glia journal Thoth and my tests. The first test I created with that, in 1998, was the Cooijmans Intelligence Test, again a wide-range test in that it combined different item types, but much easier than the Test For Genius and Nemesis Test. The CIT became relatively popular, with several dozens of submissions in the next few years. It was even published in the Finnish Mensa journal, as were the TFG and Nemesis.
Around this time I also designed the unusual Creative Association Test, which turned out very unsuccessful in attracting testees - only 2 in about 4 years.
The next major thing was the Daedalus Test, summer 1999. A four-dimensional labyrinth of logic and agony dominated by a real Minotaur. I was quite confident this was the hardest test ever created, and indeed no submissions at all came in during its first few years. But to my surprise in 2001 suddenly a perfect score appeared, qualifying that person for the Giga Society, which I had founded earlier in 1996 (requirement: 99.9999999th %ile or 1 in a billion).
Also in 1999 there were problems with test items being published on the Internet without my permission, thus making fraud very easy on one of my tests, the Numbers subtest of the Long Test For Genius (some of it also appearing in the Short TFG). I removed this most popular subtest from the LTFG for that reason; it can still be taken unofficially though as there are people who greatly enjoy solving difficult number series, and this test contains some of exceptional quality. It is regrettable that the fun is spoiled if one can so easily stumble upon the solutions.
These problems arose because the then President of the Prometheus Society had, without my permission or knowledge, submitted several of my test items with solutions for publication to someone who is publishing them until today. A letter of confession from the President regarding this is in my possession. In the winter of 1999-2000 I contacted the person who was illegally publishing my work and asked him to stop. He did not respond and kept publishing the problems with solutions without my permission. Dealing with this was hard for me because at the time I did not have access to the Internet myself, and because early 2000 I got serious health problems which lasted for months.
Later I found out that the test items were not only still being published, but that other names than mine were being given as author names, apparently to thus hide the copyright violation; to make it appear as if I was not the original author; to make it appear as if I had used problems in my test that had been created by others. And of course it is thinkable that somewhat similar series have been found by others independently of me. But those series only ended up in this particular publication because they appeared in my test, as proven by the said letter of confession. The other author names were added after I had informed the violator that he did not have my permission to publish my work, apparently to disguise the fact that he was publishing without my permission.
The worst part is that it now appears to the public as if I have used test items created by others. This is not only copyright violation but also character assassination. In case there was ever any doubt: all of the problems in Numbers (and the Short TFG) have been created in 1995 by me, Paul Cooijmans, and me alone. Who says otherwise is committing a crime. It is sad, but there are those who possess no talent or creativity of their own and seek fulfilment in life through the destruction of the good work of others. They are like museum visitors cutting up invaluable paintings.
Apart from unsupervised take-at-home tests, I designed two supervised tests in 1997 - the Giga Test - and 1999 - the Grail Test. The latter went with founding the Grail Society, requirement 99.999999999th %ile (1 in 100 billion). Both are in Netherlandic and have been taken only by 5 (Giga) and 2 (Grail) persons. The Grail Test is unusual in that it contains items not just for mental but also for various physical abilities, as meant in my article Definition of G.
Meanwhile only about 5 submissions had come in to the Prize For Genius 2000, that would end December 31 1999. One of those was a very high score from a South-African colleague of the Netherlander who had scored high on my tests several years earlier. The year ended and I informed the winner. He indicated he would rather not have an official ceremony, and we agreed I would simply convert the prize money of 2000 guilders to his bank account, which I did February 2000. We kept in contact via letters for a few months thereafter, and then he went back to South-Africa to work there in his father's company (he had been working in The Netherlands as a trainee).
The rest of the year, health problems forced me to cut down on the IQ test work. During the Autumn of 2000 I slowly recovered, and the next breakthrough came January 2001 when I bought a new computer and got an Internet connection. I acquainted myself with Windows, Word, e-mail, web design and the like, and started making a web site for the Glia Society and my IQ tests and other work (actually a Giga Society member had made a Giga site in 1999 already).
Mid-February 2001 I got a cable Internet connection and web space and put the web site online; GliaWeb was born. From the start on I had around 80 page views a day, which would later go up to 200-300 when I managed to get listed in the Yahoo! directory. Inspired by the new medium I created the <COLT> - Cooijmans OnLine Test. Several more new tests would follow, the hardest being the Isis Test, aiming to identify the most intelligent individual ever in the universe. And, inspired by the "Bonsai Kitten" web site, I designed the Bonsai Test, a miniature test of low difficulty containing various item types.
Mid-2001 a strange thing happened; the aforementioned Netherlander who had scored high on the TFG and several other tests of mine was found near a railway tunnel, his head neatly separated from his body. As his death was mysterious, I sought contact with the South-African colleague to inform him and ask if he perhaps knew any backgrounds to this. I did not know an address in South-Africa, so I wrote to the old address in The Netherlands, hoping the current occupants would know his new address. Surprisingly, it turned out the address was occupied by relatives of the high-scoring Netherlander, who told me the South-African colleague had been an imaginary identity under which the Netherlander had resubmitted the Long Test For Genius to thus win the Prize For Genius. The name of the "South-African colleague" was actually the name of a nephew of him, a young boy living at this address. The Short TFG answers I had revealed to him had enabled him to score about 20 IQ points above his usual level, when retaking the Long TFG under a false name. I of course disqualified the "South-African" submission from the contest and awarded the Prize to the runner-up, who as it happens was the high-scoring Netherlander himself with his original score.
For reasons of piety I ignored the fact that he had never registered and paid the 10 guilder registration fee for the contest with his own name and score, which (registration) was a requirement to compete for the Prize, even though I nevertheless had notified him well before the deadline that he was still allowed to register if so desired; therefore I ignored the fact that he was not entitled to the Prize at all, not to mention the fact that he had committed fraud and robbed me of 2000 guilders, which would rightfully be a reason for disqualification altogether, if not for prosecution. For clarity it should be noted that the highest scorer among those who HAD registered had solved 20 problems less than the high-scoring Netherlander on the latter's first (genuine) attempt, so could not rightly be called "highest scorer" and was not entitled to the Prize either.
I now also understood a discrepancy I had noted when I received the fraudulent submission; although the Long TFG score had been in the mid-180s, the hypothetical score on the Short TFG, which consisted of a subset of LTFG items, was around IQ 200 - the highest ever on any test. It had even occurred to me briefly then that the submission might have come from the Netherlander under a false name, but being too good for the world as I am, I didn't give that a second thought.
Another remarkable circumstance was that, looking back, the Netherlander, with whom I had been in regular correspondence for several years, had stopped writing to me at the time of the total eclipse of 1999, which he had witnessed. I only realized this after his death. Also the South-African's style of letter-writing somehow resembled his, be it that the handwriting was different. He had told me before the eclipse that it would be an important experience for him, a turning point. In hindsight, after the eclipse he has only written to me as the South-African.
There were more things: the Netherlander, who had taken all of Ronald K. Hoeflin's tests, had told me at some point he had retested on those under his sister's name, scoring higher. And later, writing to me as the South-African, he again mentioned taking Hoeflin's tests with again higher scores. I have informed Hoeflin of these retests around 2006. And in his very last letter to me as the South-African, a few weeks before my 35th birthday in April 2000, he gave me as a "parting gift" the answers to a test by another Netherlandic Mensa member who had awarded 300 guilders to the highest scorer on his test, and suggested I would use those to win the prize...
In the second half of 2001 I created the Qoymans Multiple-Choice test, that in its free period of about a month drew 60 submissions. Never before had I received so many submissions in such a short period. The Psychometric Qrosswords of late 2001 though were less popular with only 2 submissions in its first few months.
To be continued