Board Thread:Naruto Discussions/@comment-34194151-20180107091407/@comment-27924662-20180108072454

Thekillman wrote:

A lot of it is. Ranging from buying time for his shadows in the chunin exams, making teams according to merit, accounting for people's abilities easily. It doesn't take an IQ of 200 to think of such things.

In general, intelligence in naruto is overstated, often pretended to be higher than it really is. Well those stuff didn't actually require it. However making such deductions in times of pressure does in great way shows that guy has some serious mental strength. Just because Shikamaru puts things in such simple way doesn't mean the stuff was easy. Practically it would require him to have some highly exceptional observation skills and mechanism forming ones. Take Tayuya's fight for instance, I would rather put my bet on the sound rather than the fingers like he did. It would have been much difficult to observe finger movements of moving target (who is also trying to sniff and kill you). Even Hidan's fight requires some serious intel. he did neutralize hidan from the equation, its just that the whole platoon of 4 member didn't have enough power to go toe-toe against them as team. Shikamaru is likely everything what everyone's says Problem is with others like Sasuke or itachi whom people assume to be above Kage interms of intelligence.