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Message: <blockquote data-quote="Maxperson" data-source="post: 6871051" data-attributes="member: 23751">Not all knowledge is intelligence.  When talking about a genius figuring things out, we're discussing reason coming into play.  Knowledge of the sort you just described has no basis in intelligence.  Any idiot can know it if taught, and the smartest person in the world won't if not taught.  Your question is a distraction from what genius and idiocy mean.And yet people can and do decipher dead languages and codes that they have never encountered before.  Gygax was wrong.  Not surprising.  Much of what he said is brilliant, and much of it is very wrong.You don't have a 50/50 chance of success on medium difficulty int based checks.  You have a 50/50 shot at int based checks that you haven't been trained in.  A genius is the only one who could be right half the time under those circumstances.Int checks matter.  The genius is a genius because he can make checks so reliably without knowing squat about the skill in question.  Einstein, Hawking, and others are only as great as they are at physics because they are ALSO highly trained.  Their base genius could only take them so far in physics with no training.  Probably not even 50/50.How many were untrained, had never heard of the intellectual endeavor prior to starting it, and did no research prior to success?</blockquote>