Captain Billy's Whiz Bang, April 1922 · page 57 of 67
Captain Billy's Whiz Bang #32 — page 57: what you’re looking at
What you’re looking at
This page presents absurdist "psychological test" questions—clearly satirical parodies of intelligence or personality assessments then gaining popularity. The questions are intentionally nonsensical, with answers relying on puns and wordplay rather than logic. The humor works through deliberate misunderstanding: Question 1 plays on "rattle" (snake) and "rattled" (disturbed). Question 2 answers the apple/policeman dilemma with a pun on "weigh" (scale). Question 3 relies on visual puns about "club" foot and "hole" pancake. The mock credibility—attributing this to "Prof. Ivan Awful Line" and promising medals for "irresponsibles"—amplifies the satire. Whiz Bang trafficked in lowbrow humor, and this likely mocks contemporary pseudo-scientific fads or dubious psychological methods gaining mainstream attention in the 1920s era. The jokes are deliberately stupid, which is precisely the point.
📄 Transcribed text from this page (OCR, searchable)
Machine-transcribed from the original scan — historical spelling and the odd misread are preserved.
56 Captain Billy's Whiz Bang The Psychology Test Puppet prints for the first time the results of the astounding psychological tests recently made by Prof. Ivan Awful Line, for Puppet. Anyone giving good rea-sons why these answers are correct will be awarded the Helium Medal for irresponsibles, the Sacred Cross of the Pink Polecats and the Ragged Ribbon of the Reming-tons. First Question. What would you do if you found yourself in an airtight room containing a mad dog, a rattlesnake and a pair of sleigh-bells? Answer. Invariably you would grasp the rattlesnake by the hind leg and rattle him, thus scaring the dog. Now you have the dog rattled. Now toll the bells for a period of 93 seconds, and at once determine what the bells told. Then, at the psyhcological moment, sleigh the dogs with bells.—I. C. S. Second Question. Supposing you had nothing to eat for three years. Suddenly you come upon a grocery store. On the outside of the store is a stand containing large, juicy, red apples. You steal one, and looking up, see a policeman. What would you do? Answer. Run into the store, jump on a scale, and get a weigh. Third Question. An Indian with a club foot, unable to walk, is stranded in the Sahara Desert sixty-two and three-thirds miles from a Child's Restaurant, with one pancake in his possession. How will he keep from starving? Answer. In the absence of a Child's Restaurant, he can eat a man's lunch by the following means. First de-tach the Indian club from his foot, and with it puncture a large hole in the pancake. He can now eat the pan-cake, have the hole of it left, and have the Sahara for kdesert.