What were the W.O.M.B.A.T questions on Rowling's old site?

Question

Does anyone have the entire list of questions and answers from the W.O.M.B.A.T tests that were posted on J.K. Rowling's website a few years back?. A link or an entire list of the answers would be quite helpful.

Answer 1

The W.O.M.B.A.T. questions can be found at the Harry Potter Lexicon, as can a description of the tests. From the Lexicon:

W.O.M.B.A.T stands for Wizards' Ordinary Magic and Basic Aptitude Test. It's administered by the Wizarding Examinations Authority. The head of this Authority is Griselda Marchbanks, CDMG, APMD, fbBB. The W.O.M.B.A.T. test appeared on Rowling's website on March 31, 2006. This test consisted of questions which require an extensive knowledge of canon and an intuitive understanding of the wizarding world to answer.

Originally, I thought the Lexicon had the official answers to the W.O.M.B.A.T.s; however Ibid rightfully pointed out that the answers at the Lexicon were a compilation of canon-based deductions made by the Lexicon editors and not answers provided by J.K. Rowling.

I'm not a fan of the Harry Potter Wikia for a few reasons. The information at the Wiki is incorrect more often than I'm comfortable with. Also, the Wiki often mixes book canon with movie canon without proper citations. The Wikia's citations, in general, can be on the sloppy side -- for example, the citation for "J.K. Rowling's official site" on the W.O.M.B.A.T. page leads to another Wiki page. Nitpicky? Maybe. But there you have it, my main reasons for being a bit distrustful of the Wikia! However, I will note that the Wiki lists W.O.M.B.A.T. questions. It does cite jkrowling.com, but when I clicked on the link to check, it took me to the Wiki's jkrowling.com page, not jkrowling.com. Take that for what you will.

I have not been able to locate a list of the W.O.M.B.A.T. questions and answers from an official source. Reading J.K. Rowling's comments on the W.O.M.B.A.T.s, I'm erring on the side that the answers were never formally released. This isn't to say they can't be deduced from the questions, such as the Lexicon attempted, or, theoretically, gleaned from a test-taker who earned a perfect score. Anyhow, J.K. Rowling says the following about the W.O.M.B.A.T.s (edits mine):

J.K. Rowling: I’ll tell you what it was [Why the W.O.M.B.A.T.s were taken down]. And this is kind of sad. I was told that it would be very unwise to put hints about Deathly Hallows on my site because we’ve had enormous trouble in Half-Blood Prince because I had put [out] hints about it. And then it was argued in court by people who wanted to put the whole book on the Internet or press people who had gotten hold of it and wanted to put it out early. And they would - An argument would be, “Well, you put it on your site, so we have the right to put it up as well.” So I was told it would be very foolish to start putting chapter headings and so on up. I would be weakening my own case against people who wanted to do spoilers. So then I started looking for something that I could give fans that wasn’t foreshadowing. Although, I hope you noticed - Sorry, I’m going off on a slight tangent.

J.K. Rowling: I was going to say, to give fans stuff that wasn’t foreshadowing Book Seven. But in fact, if you were paying attention, W.O.M.B.A.T. Three had loads of stuff from Book Seven in it. (laughs) And no one knew, and no one realized, including the lawyers. Yay! So I win.

J.K. Rowling: Actually there was a whole lot of stuff in W.O.M.B.A.T. Three that was taken from [Book] Seven. And people picked up on it, on some of it. I had some stuff in there about Gryffindor’s sword and a few other things. So.

Melissa Anelli: Will you put up the answers so that people can kind of figure it out?

J.K. Rowling: You know, I could. I could put it [up]. Would you like that? Would that-

Melissa Anelli: Oh, we’d love that.

J.K. Rowling: That would be fun? Okay, that would be cool. But it did amuse me. I can’t remember, someone gave - Wait, wait. Some site gave a guide to what you should be putting [as the W.O.M.B.A.T. answers], and I think people who followed their advice were not getting the top marks, so …
_{J.K. Rowling Pottercast interview with The Leaky Cauldron - 23.12.07}

So, if an official list of the W.O.M.B.A.T. answers exists, I cannot find it (and my Google-Fu is pretty decent). I tend to think the W.O.M.B.A.T. questions at the Lexicon are probably correct. We know that in 2007 J.K. Rowling was willing to consider releasing the W.O.M.B.A.T. answers; however, it does not appear she actually did so in an official capacity.

Answer 2

While the quizzes are no longer up, copies of the questions can be found on several websites, includeing the Lexicon (1, 2, 3), and the wiki. The fact that they all have identical versions of the test would seem to indicate those being the actual questions, as would the fact that they match surviving screenshots.

The answers were never officially released, but while the quizzes were up a fan named Roonwit figured out how they were scored. When I asked him about his methods he told me:

I worked them out when the door page got a time turner and you could get an instant grade after doing a wombat. The method was to answer only a few questions (perhaps just one) and find sets of answers where you could get a different grade by changing the answer to just one question. That allows you to rank answers and with a few assumptions (such as that questions in the same section or subsection score the same) you can deduce the probable scoring by doing each wombat a lot of times. My scoring is probably correct, but there might be mistakes and I might have made incorrect assumptions or deductions so I can't say for definite that they are right.

His answer key can be found here. Note that some of the incorrect answer choices will still award partial credit.