Critical thinking exercises for adults
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These exercises are the ones on this site. They are for adults in the plain sense that the examples are about work, news, arguments, and quotations, not a school worksheet. They are not a course with a cohort, and they are not therapy. There is no account. Scores and saved lines stay on the device. Nothing in this guide claims that a week of practice raises a measured score by any amount. The library does not have that measurement. What it has is a set of reps, and the reps are specific.
What the test is practising
The test is built from nine skills. Logical fallacies: does this step match a named mistake, such as a straw man or a false dilemma. Cognitive biases: is a judgement being tugged by confirmation, availability, anchoring, framing, sunk cost, or one of the other bias cards. Evaluating arguments: is a reason being offered for a further claim, or only a description. Identifying assumptions: what would have to be true for the step to work. Fact versus opinion: which part could be checked and which part is a verdict. Interpreting an argument: what the passage is doing, not what a slogan near it usually means. Applying a principle: can you use a rule on a new case without quietly changing the rule. Numbers and chance: percentages, risk, samples, averages and charts. Evidence and sources: studies, headlines, experts, photos and quotations, and how to weigh them. You can sit all nine, or one. The lengths are 10, 20, or 30 questions. Timing is untimed, 45 seconds each, or 25 seconds each. After each answer the explanation is the point. The result is a count and a skills profile for that sitting. There is no hidden pass mark.
A daily version is shorter. The home page offers one quotation and then three questions, the same three for the rest of that day, and calls it about three minutes. A streak is kept on the device. One missed day in a week does not, by the page’s own rule, wipe the streak. That is a habit designed around the test, not a second curriculum. If you only have the three minutes, do those. If you want a skill that was weak last time, set the focus and take ten.
One fallacy, slowly
Open any fallacy or bias card. Read the definition before the example. Then try to say the definition without the name. If you cannot, you will mislabel the next thing you read. The card has two practice questions that also sit in the test. Do them on the card, where the explanation is a paragraph, before you do them against a clock. Here is the shape, using the ad hominem card’s standard, not a new case. The definition says a personal fact is being used in place of a reason. The reply says to put the personal fact to one side and ask whether a reason remains. Your job in the question is to notice when the options describe a different mistake, such as a slide, a false choice, or a mere insult that never pretended to be logic. The name is not a point you score for disliking the speaker.
After the card, use the comparison pages when two names feel interchangeable. Straw man against red herring. Ad hominem against tu quoque. Slippery slope against false dilemma. Appeal to authority against appeal to popularity. Confirmation against availability. Anchoring against framing. Post hoc against the everyday word correlation, which has no separate card, and the comparison page says so. Sunk cost against status quo. The comparisons quote the cards. They are the exercise of refusing a blur. Write one sentence you heard this week under the definition it actually matches. If it matches none, leave it unlabelled. Inventing a fit is the opposite of the drill.
Build one argument
The argument builder is the slow exercise. You write premises and a conclusion. For each premise you answer four questions: is this true, is it relevant, what would have to be true, and what is missing. Each answer is yes, no, or unsure, and each can carry a note. The page then marks weak premises and unstated assumptions and gives a verdict: strong, needs support, or doesn’t follow. Nothing is uploaded. You can save the argument on the device, copy the summary, or share the text. Do this with a paragraph you agree with. It is easy to dissect a stranger. It is the exercise to dissect yourself. A premise you marked “unsure” is not a moral failure. It is the point. A conclusion that doesn’t follow is information about the step, not about your identity.
A small version of the same drill, with no tool: take a post you were about to share. Underline the conclusion. Underline the reasons. Cross out every sentence that is only mood. If no reason remains, you do not yet have an argument to agree with. You have a slogan. The builder simply refuses to let you skip the underline.
Check one quotation
The fourth exercise is attribution. Pick a line you have given to an old name. Look it up in the library. Read the badge before the meaning. Well attested, paraphrase or translation, summary, questionable, and misattributed are different jobs, and the misquote guide walks them with the actual notes, including lines hung on Einstein, Gandhi, Voltaire, Aristotle, Nietzsche, and Sagan. Then play the misquote detector. It shows a line, you say genuine, paraphrased, or misattributed, and the card shows the correct label and the source note. The score stays on the device. Questionable lines and summaries are left out of the detector so the choice stays three ways. Do not treat a high score as proof you can skip the note next time. The note is the exercise. The score is a record of whether you used it.
A week that stays inside the site
Day one: three daily questions, then read the explanation of the one you missed. Day two: one fallacy card and its two questions, then the comparison it points at. Day three: one argument in the builder, including a premise you mark unsure. Day four: ten questions on the skill you got wrong. Day five: one quotation, the badge, and the work it cites, opened if you have the book. Day six: the misquote detector until you miss one, then read that note twice. Day seven: rest, or the daily three. This is a schedule of pages, not a promise. Missing a day is built into the streak rule already. The point of writing it down is to stop the vague intention to “think more critically,” which is not an exercise. An exercise has a card, a question, and an explanation you can point at.
Apply the rule you were given
A fifth rep is the principle question, because a rule is easy to treat as a mood. The test gives you the rule in the prompt and a new case under it. Apply that rule, not the rule you wish had been written. If the case is ugly and the rule still covers it, the answer is that it covers it. If the case is sympathetic and the rule does not, the answer is that it does not. The argument builder is the same muscle without a prompt: you have to say what would have to be true. Neither exercise scores you for the nicer conclusion. There is still no pass mark, and finishing the week is not a measurement of your judgement against anyone else’s.