Cast your mind back to your school days, and most likely you'll remember at least one horrid instance when you sat gazing blankly at an exam paper.

Some subjects - especially in a pressurised exam room environment - feel like having to crack the Enigma code after a night out on the tiles.

Many found themselves crying with frustration at it, news.com.au reports.

What's important to note is the students were in our equivalent of Year 10, and were sitting a maths and statistics paper which presented a question teachers claim would not have been taught until the end of Level 2 (year 11).

So could you do it?

The question asks:

"Holes are drilled through a 2m long horizontal board.

"The rope passes through the holes to make the seat of a swing.

"The height of a seat is 1.2 metres above the ground.

"How far apart would the holes in the board need to be if the shape of the rope above the seat stays the same?"

We're going to be honest with you, we have no idea how to even go about answering this.

Despite a deluge of complaints sent to The New Zealand Herald in response to the test, the NZQA is standing by the test.