When students are uncertain of the answers to questions on tests or homework, they often just give it their best guess or leave the problem blank. However, some kids are a little more creative, and have come up with some hilarious wrong answers for their teachers and professors to grade! Thankfully for us, many of these teachers have hung onto some of these hysterical, side-splitting submissions.
While it may seem like educators would get annoyed over answers so bizarre, it seems like most are grateful for the humorous interruption to grading perfect papers. From drawing various creatures in place of answers to detailing Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter in a Civil War essay, many children have mastered the class clown role with ease. Some of those teachers took to Reddit to share some of the funniest, worst and most unique wrong answers that have ever crossed their desks. These are the best of the best.
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#30 Seven Brutally Honest Answers
On a quiz where the students had to fill in seven missing values on an array calculation, one of the students completely forgot how to do the calculations and so had no answers. My school grades on a 1-4 scale, so anticipating his failure, he wrote into the spaces:
I
will
have
to
take
a
one.
It so happened that it was a correlation coefficient equation, and the final answer was, in fact, ".998". I told him it was close enough, so I gave him credit for that one—he still only got 1/7, which was not a passing grade of course, but he had a good laugh.
#28 (Literally) Digging Their Own Grave
Someone I know, on their organic chemistry exam that they knew they bombed because they only answered 2 out of 5 questions, drew a tombstone with “R.I.P. my grade” in one of the blank question spaces. The grading TA drew bouquets of flowers at the tombstone in red pen and everyone laughed except for the guy whose exam it was.
#26 Pick Up Lines At Science Olympiad
I helped mark an exam for a Science Olympiad competition once. The main proctor was a good looking girl who actually administered the test; I just helped with grading. One of the exams came back blank, save something along the lines of, "You're really hot, can I have your number?"
I was flattered.
#25 A Morbid ESL Mad-Libs
A poor girl didn't understand word transformations (on an English exam for non-English speakers).
transform the bold word
My dad will retire in a few years. He's looking forward to his _________.
She writes: death
#24 Begging For A Passing Grade
Personal apologies to me as their teacher. I remember one time a student skipped writing the final essay question and instead wrote a full page on why I should pass them regardless of the fact that they have no idea what the question is about.
I felt kind of guilty marking it zero.
#23 "Consumer Goods" And "Consumer Bads"
In microeonomics there was a question about consumer goods and this guy wrote an entire answer comparing and contrasting "consumer goods" and "consumer bads", which was basically a short answer of what you should and shouldn't do in a retail store. Funny stuff.
#22 The "Star Stankled Bonger" National Anthem
I was grading State standardized tests for 3rd graders. The question: What is the official name of the national anthem? Most kids knew, or sort-of knew the answer but their spelling was hilarious. Star Stankled Bonger, Stam Strangler Banjo, etc...
#21 A Miraculous Feat
I once marked a Calculus test where a student scored 0%. Turns out the student copied the answers off the student next to him, but didn't realize that there were 2 different versions of the test to prevent this exact scenario.
Honestly, I was impressed. Outside of submitting a blank test, I've never seen someone get 0%.
#20 A Gorgeously Drawn Race Car
I was the TA for a chemistry class. Someone who clearly had not studied for the exam didn't bother to answer any of the questions. Instead he drew a car on the last page of the exam. It was one of the most beautiful drawings I'd ever seen, so beautiful that I felt terrible giving this guy an F. The details, the shadowing, the curves—it was all amazing. Even more so because he did that in 50 minutes!
He dropped the class halfway through the semester and I don't know what happened to him after, but I really hope he switched majors to something more art-related.
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#19 The Proper Solution To Illness
What do you take when you are ill? (4 Letters)
PAINKILLER.
The correct answer was pill (I don't remember if that was the exact question, but the answer was Pill).
Little Bird Pediatric Dentistry
#18 Using A Potato To Pass Engineering
This wasn’t my marking of an exam but a friend of mine. She was writing a thermodynamics exam for engineering and forgot the formula for solids. She could only recall for gases. So she wrote ‘assume potato is gas’ and continued on her way. She still passed the course.
#17 The Sad Tale Of Mr. Hamburger
I was going through some old stuff a couple of years ago, and found a cache of selected papers from my high school days (graduated in 1988). Included in the cache was an AP Biology exam that included a short-essay section set up in the format of "Choose 2 of the 4 questions to answer; you can answer a third for extra credit if you so desire." I chose two and gave fairly bland but relatively complete answers to them—the kind of answers that get you 13/15 points or such.
For the extra credit option, I chose the one that said, "Using a basic hamburger (bun and meat only), explain the complete workings of the digestive tract from end to end." I wrote it as a child's story called Mr. Hamburger Gets Digested using very short and simple sentences. I illustrated it in places. According to the comment on the document, my instructor found this absolutely hilarious (but also accurate—I got maximum credit).
Photo by Getty
#16 A One-Word Fluke
On a university level eco-toxicology exam where the question was, "Is the process slow or fast?" (no explaining required), the student answered, "Yes."
#15 Controlling Cornfield Infestation With "3 Cats Per Acre"
One day on some exam, a friend was pestering my uncle about sharing answers. He was annoyed and told his friend the first thing that came to his mind.
The next day, the teacher returns the graded exams but the last one was his friend's. Then the teacher proceeded to read the question and the answer:
"This is a very unusual answer, but it was too good to leave it unnoticed...How do you control a plague of mice in a corn plantation?"
"3 cats per acre."
#14 A Partial-Credit Pinata Drawing
When I was taking Calculus II in University, I didn’t know how to solve one of the final essay questions. I drew a piñata with a sombrero instead, and got partial credit on the question.
#13 The Strangely Simple Physics Of A Plane
There was a question on a physics exam asking us to explain the forces acting on an airplane. It was supposed to be something like this.
Instead the student wrote: "The air be on bottom, and the air be on top. The plane be right in the middle."
#12 Looking To Jesus For Help
"Jesus is the answer" for every question.
#11 The "Magic" Process Of Chemistry
There was always at least one chem exam where someone took a complicated reaction mechanism question and just wrote "magic" between the starting and ending compounds.
#10 A Semi-Brilliant Solution For A Doomed Man
I was taking algorithms in college, and on one of the homeworks we had to solve a problem in which a man and a lion are in a ring together. The lion would always move as fast as the man and in a straight line towards him. The goal was to develop an algorithm that would give the man a path that would make it so the lion never caught him.
This is a known problem with a real solution, but I took advantage of the poor wording (it was late the night before it was due) and said if the lion only moves as fast as the man then all the man has to do is stand still. Since the lion didn't start on top of the man, and the man stood still the lion would have to stand still and the man would never be caught. The TA wrote "haha no" on my answer and gave me a zero.
Tauana/LookingGlass/Splash
#9 The Reason For French Colonialism
When you grade written exams, it’s just a constant stream of stupidity. But one of my all time favorites was something to the effect of “the French were up there in Canada slangin fur” to describe the reason for French colonialism.
#8 Race To The Finish
I was proctoring for a statistics final exam, and five minutes past the start time a student stood up, gathered her things, and turned in the final exam to the professor. It was completely blank except for a little note on the top: "Sorry, I don't know anything :) ."
Media Bakery
#7 Friendship Bond
Not a teacher, but during a chemistry exam one of the questions was about the bond between 2 ions. My friend answered, "Friendship bond."
Thinkstock
#6 A Dead-Brained Crash Dummy
The question was the following: Crash test dummies are made to be as realistic as possible to ensure that crash tests produce the most accurate results possible. State a feature about them that makes them realistic.
The student's answer: It has the mind of a dead person.
#5 Advice From An Overly-Confident Student
I had a grown man scribble notes in the margins, detailing how questions could be worded better, how the graphs should be bigger, giving me examples of "better" questions, and even writing me sentences about how I'm trying to trick him by making C the obvious answer but D was the correct one.
He did not do nearly as well as he thought he did.
#4 A Civil War Essay On "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter"
I'm not a teacher, but in high school history another student started out his essay about the causes of the American Civil War as you would, and then halfway through started outlining the plot to Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter. I may still have a photo of the essay; it was too funny.
#3 An Odd Request From A Silly Professor
When taking a geography exam my freshman year of college, my teacher stated on the exam, "In 1619, twenty Africans were brought to the English colony of Jamestown, Virginia. Historians are undecided on whether the legal practice of slavery began there, since at least some of them had the status of indentured servant....With this in mind, draw a triceratops wearing glasses."
Photo by Getty
#2 Successfully Sidestepping The Questions
I'm not a teacher, but a freshman. I just took a test involving root words where we had to write the definition, three words including the root, and a sentence. For every single sentence, I picked a random word with the root and put “I sure wish I knew what (word with root) meant.” Wasn’t specified in the directions or stated before the test. I’ll write an update on the score I will be given.
Update: I got an A
#1 A Hilarious Computer Calculus Joke
One of my friends was poor at calculus. During a calculus test in my high school, he wrote 'Failed to Load. Press F5 to refresh'. The teacher laughed at it.
