A schoolboy from Leeds scored the highest possible score on the Mensa test, beating Albert Einstein and Stephen Hawking, and the boy celebrated with a family meal at Nando’s. Yusuf Shah, 11, registered a 162—the maximum for under-18s and in the top percent of all people. Hawking is said to have scored 160, and Einstein, although he never officially took the test, is believed to have achieved the same.
Yusuf said his friends at school are always telling him he’s very smart, and he wanted to test that by taking the IQ quiz. To celebrate the achievement, Yusuf went to Nando’s for a meal with his parents and two younger brothers, Zaki and Khalid.
Yusuf hopes to study mathematics at Cambridge or Oxford University and said he loves doing anything that stimulates his brain. When he is not studying, the math whiz enjoys doing sudokus and solving Rubik’s cubes. He started playing with Rubik’s cubes in January after he saw one at his friend’s house, and by the end of the month, he was able to solve cubes of all difficulties with ease. His delighted mom, Sana, said, “I was so proud.” He is the first person to take the Mensa test in the family.
Yusuf is deeply interested in geography and flags, but mathematics is his true passion. He’d been invited to study the subject with his senior, but his parents preferred that he stay in his year group for this “social development.”With mathematics on his mind, when he was seven, Yusuf even found a phenomenon now coined “Yusuf’s Square Rule” within the family. In his spare time, he dabbles in sudokus and solves Rubik’s cubes, which he does with much ease. His ultimate dream would be to study mathematics at Cambridge or Oxford, but in the meantime, he will be working on his creative writing skills for secondary school entrance exams.
Yusuf is leading by example. His eight-year-old brother, Khalid, hopes to take the Mensa test when he’s older. In the meantime, he’s developed an interest in solving Rubik’s cubes.