Two parts, about ten minutes: three timed rounds listing uses for everyday objects, then ten questions that point to one of six creative styles from the book. It is for fun and self-reflection, not a validated assessment.

What this test is, and is not

It is a short, honest game with two parts. The first part asks you to list uses for an everyday thing, and shows you how many ideas you made, how varied they were, how many were not the obvious ones, and how detailed they were. The second part asks ten questions about how you tend to work, and points you to one of six styles from the book.

It is not a psychological test. It cannot tell you how creative you are, it has no norms to compare you to, and a score on it says nothing about your intelligence, your job or your worth. Take it for the pleasure of seeing how your mind works.

Your answers stay in your browser. Nothing is sent to us, and nothing is saved.

Part one: uses

You get three objects, two minutes each. List as many uses as you can. Tricks that help:

Start with the obvious ones. Get them out of the way.
Then change the size. What if it were huge? Tiny?
Change who uses it. A child, a chef, a stage magician.
Do not stop to judge. The book’s Idea Spaghetti chapter says the more ideas you throw at the wall, the better the odds that one sticks.

How the scoring works

We score four things with a simple word-matching rule we wrote ourselves:

Ideas is the number of different uses you typed. Repeats and very short entries do not count.
Kinds is the number of different kinds of use, such as building, art, play or repair. Uses our word list does not recognize count as one extra kind.
Original is the share of your ideas that were not on our list of common answers.
Detail is the average number of words per idea.

This rule is crude. It cannot tell a clever idea from nonsense, and it can miss a smart idea written in unusual words. Use the numbers as a mirror, not a grade.

Part two: your creative style

Ten questions, each with three statements. Pick the one that sounds most like you. There are no right answers, and some questions will make you choose between two things you like.

The six styles come from chapters of the book:

Scavenger (Chapter 3): you notice what others walk past.
Connector (Chapter 10): you join unconnected things.
Shoe Swapper (Chapter 9): you start with the person on the other end.
Far-Out Dreamer (Chapter 8): you think big and tell the story.
Idea Chef (Chapter 2): you make a lot of ideas, fast.
Ruthless Editor (Chapter 11): you choose and cut.

Nobody is just one. The result shows your strongest style and the one that comes next, then points you to a chapter and a tool.

Questions

Is it accurate? It is a game with a transparent rule, not a measurement. Different days, moods and objects would give different numbers.

Is this one of the tests the book mentions? No. The book refers to professional creativity tests, such as the Torrance Creativity Test. This is a much simpler game made for this site, with styles drawn from the book’s chapters, and it should not be compared with them.

Is my result stored? No. It exists only on your screen until you close the page.

Can I share it? Yes. The Copy my result button copies a short line with your style and the page link. It does not include your answers.