Teachers Admit The Smartest Cheats They Ever Saw Students Almost Get Away With

We condition kids that they have to pass tests, rather than retain information. So out of that comes the need to cheat. And out of the need to cheat comes ingenuity.

Redditor C--tsAndBluntss asked:

What is the most genius way to cheat on a exam you have ever seen?

Here were the answers.

Most of the time I didn't see it. I only saw the times people got caught.

For me it was when online classes started being a thing. Prof told us the system would check if you had the notes open in another tab and would auto-close any of the same instance of the notes so you couldn't have the notes and the test open at the same time. It actually did close the other tabs/windows to my surprise.

Nothing stopped me from copying all of the class content into a word document.

After enough of that I realized I could have the test open in explorer and have the notes open in firefox.

Yesterday my class had a science test on an iPad. My friend searched the questions on the internet and airdropped the answers to everybody.

The best place to hide things is right in plain sight. We had old desks that had all sorts of wear on them, so I'm simply wrote what I needed on my desk really really lightly with a pencil. You could even erase it with a swipe of your hand if the teacher thought something was up.

My brilliant uncle was a PhD candidate in the 70's at a pretty prestigious institution in the US. Well back in the day, to graduate with a PhD in his field of study (engineering), you had to demonstrate your mastery of a foreign language other than English. And by foreign language, only French, German and Spanish counted. Even though my Uncle was born abroad and was fluent in other languages, the administration refused to let him pass the foreign language requirement without mastery of one of the above languages.

Upon inquiring on what it would take to pass out of the language requirement, he was told that it would be based on comprehension of one of these (Spanish, French or German) books where a random page would be selected by the faculty for the student to translate.

He promptly selected the French hardcover book, took it to his girlfriend at the time and cracked open that book to pages 165/166. With his girlfriend's translation, he memorized the contents of those pages.

The next day, he opened that book to page 165, creased the spine and closed it. He repeated that same action the day after. Again he did the same the next day. And the day after that. And so on for the next year until it was time to demonstrate his mastery of the French language. Stepping into the professors office, he handed over the book and the professor flipped open the book to a random page.

The professor handed over the book back to my uncle. Looking down, my uncle saw pages 165/166, cracked a little smile and walked away with his PhD just a month later.

I used to type my answers into a grid and make the font a size 2 or something. I could fit 50 Spanish translations on the size of a postage stamp more legibly than I could have ever written it. I'd even pass them out to friends.

Teacher told me this one. This kid was one of those kids who hardly showed up to class, so it was a surprise he showed up for the final. The kid asked to put down the window at the beginning of class because it was warm in the room, so my professor let him. The kid scribbled on his paper for 30 minutes and then asked to go to the bathroom, which my professor allowed. The kid came back and finished the test and then left.

The twist in all of this? The kid had dropped a copy of the test out of the window to his friend down below, who went to the lounge and took the exam. They then met up in the bathroom and the kid took the test from his friend and went back to class, wrote his name on it and then turned it in.

The only fault in this plan was that another professor happened to be looking in that direction as soon as the test was dropped out of the window, and proceeded to foil the whole plan.

Back in '99 or so when scientific calculators were new-ish (I think?) I got my own rather than use the school ones.

They would check our pockets and our stuff to make sure we didn't have a cheat sheet.

They would check our calculators to make sure we didn't have anything written. However I had a cheat sheet on paper, on the inside of the calculators cover which fit behind. So I showed my screen and that it was blank but no one removed the lid.

So I had to slide up the lid about an inch, and had written everything down as tiny as I could.

Cheated and got away with it.

For some reason a school had the french test take place on a computer and the browser that was installed was chrome and chrome has an auto-translate feature.

Had a buddy take an online course. Wrote to the company that did the book/materials for the course saying he was a professor and wanted to use their materials for the course. They sent him all the answers and such. Brilliant.

I think this isn't exactly cheating, but all the answers were on the test. Somehow I was the only one who figured it out

High school biology test, 10 questions and all multiple choice. I knew the answer for 6 questions, so as I was trying to figure out the other questions something come to my attention, all the alternatives were like that:

A) zzzzzzz

B) xxxxxxx

C) ccccccc.

D) vvvvvvvv

E) bbbbbbb

All the correct answers had a dot at the end of the sentence...

I have a full tattoo sleeve on my right arm and both of my hands done. When I had an upcoming test I hadn't studied for, I would write little keywords to make myself remember things inside my tattoos and I'd write them in a similar color to the ink so unless you were looking insanely close you couldn't see them.

Also, in high school my buddy and I had a system where he would signal what question he needed help with and then I would hold up 1-4 fingers for A-D.

First we dumpster dived to get the mimeographed test. Yes this was the 80s. We had to tape the mimeograph to the dorm window backwards because its a reversed image. The test was multiple choice so placed tiny pin holes running the length of the pencil. 1 hole for A. 2 holes for B. Etc. It was a lot of work but we actually had to miss a few to make it legit.

On an online exam, I saw someone take the whole exam without even touching his computer. The mouse was moving and everything. Turns out he set up a Remote Desktop and had someone take it from home

I forgot to write a huge paper in college so I wrote just one page and printed it 20 times. I handed it in and over the weekend finished the assignment. The next week the professor asked what happened and I said it must have been a mistake with the printer. He said that's alright, just print him out the full thing and bring it next class. I got an extra week with no penalty.

This wasn't that genius, but my freshman year of college, I missed an exam and the professor let me take a makeup in his office. I was failing miserably when I noticed his office phone.

I called my roommate, had him open my notes and he helped me get all the answers right. Not very genius but ballsy.

A girl I know wrote all the answers on her thigh, then wore tights to the exam. When she stretched the tights she could see the answers but then let it go and cover it up

One class I had, we were given the essay questions in advance so we knew what to study. During the test, we had to write the essays in class in blue books. I would write the essays in different blue books before the test and bring them and blank ones to class. At the end, I'd just switch out the completely filled out ones for the blank ones. It was such a hard class that I still never got a 100% on any of them.

Best one I've heard of was a guy who was in band got a copy of the test for another class from someone who had the class earlier in the day. It was multiple choice, he transposed all the answers (A, B, C, or D) into musical notes. When they had to clear their decks before the test, he sat all his stuff on the ground with the "sheet music" on top. He had it divided into a specific number of notes per measure, so it was easy to find the one he was looking for.

Record answers, move recording to ipod, earbud up through my hoodie sleeve, place ear on hand and listen to answers.

I knew a guy who wrote down all the answers on his graphing calculator and got away with it.

It's only impressive because it was for a Spanish vocab quiz.

Not really cheating, but I heard about a class where the final was so comprehensive the professor told the class it was entirely open-book and they could bring in anything for reference they could carry (with the notable exception being a laptop with WiFi).

One guy apparently carried in his older brother on his back who was a TA for a higher level class in the same subject.

Yeah, he got an A.

My "genius" way of cheating was to write the answers on a tiny piece of paper. I wasn't the most original 13 year old.

I was also very klutzy. Just after a Japanese test I dropped said little piece of paper on the ground. A very funny boy that I had a huge crush on picked it up, his eyes went wide when he saw what was on it. We weren't really friends - we were young enough that we didn't really have mixed gender friend groups yet. But this boy joked with me in class a lot. I looked at him pleadingly and said "Please don't tell". He smiled and screwed the piece of paper up. He then proceeded to eat it. Swallowed the f-cker whole. "Secret safe with me," he said.

As a 13 year old, it was the single most genius thing I'd ever seen. I swear I fell in love in that moment.