Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-26145872-20160224185338/@comment-27660682-20160228010502

The smartest character would have to go to black zetsu. Not only has he had 1000 years to acquire knowledge, he is an espionage/ information type,  is caniving as he tempted indira and also guided madara along a path to revive his mother kaguya. Behind him I would have to give it to tobirama senju, as it was his intelligence and deep understanding of jutsu that allowed him to survive the harsh war environment he grow up in and invent most of the advanced jutsu that became problematic in the series, such as edo tensi,  shadow clones,  flying rajin.

Madara is smart for his manipulation of obito, but black zetsu implied he was behind that too so.. madara didn't outsmart anyone in battle, if perfect susanno spam is evidence of battlefield intelligence,  then im not impressed

Shikamaru is very smart but his intelligence isnt alwsys immediate, he often needs to prep outside of battle. His father was confirmed to be better than him in chess.

Sasuke isnt smart at all, he got lucky because his chidori happened to diffuse the bombs, he himself admitted everything else was just attributed to his sharingan being sble to see chakra. Being able to see chakra doesnt make you smart. His big kirin strategy took an amazing 3 years to prep, and it still failed. Sasuke vs danzo was the biggest plot armor ive ever seen, sasuskes big plot of tricking him with genjutsu made 0 sense when it was confirmed in that same battle he could easily see through his genjustu. Danzo should have ended him multiple times.

Itachi has to be up there as well, as well as kakashi, orochimaru,  kabuto, and minato.