It must be that time of year. Over the weekend, the supposedly confidential Wonderlic scores leaked for the 2018 draft quarterbacks, as they seem to do every spring. The unconfirmed scores have probably been used as the backbone of a thousand online arguments by now, while the true numbers are being used similarly across the league. And yet, it's still unclear if the results have any true predictive value.
The Wonderlic test predates World War II and has been used in the NFL for over 40 years, at once simple—12 minutes to complete 50 multiple choice questions—and inscrutable, a single score taken as a stand-in for intelligence.