Not just the hardest taxi test, it's arguably the hardest test of any kind: > If anything, this description understates the case. The six-mile radius from Char

Not just the hardest taxi test, it's arguably the hardest test of any kind: > If anything, this description understates the case. The six-mile radius from Charing Cross, the putative center-point of London marked by an equestrian statue of King Charles I, takes in some 25,000 streets. London cabbies need to know all of those streets, and how to drive them — the direction they run, which are one-way, which are dead ends, where to enter and exit traffic circles, and so on. But cabbies also need to know everything on the streets. Examiners may ask a would-be cabbie to identify the location of any restaurant in London. Any pub, any shop, any landmark, no matter how small or obscure — all are fair game. Test-takers have been asked to name the whereabouts of flower stands, of laundromats, of commemorative plaques. One taxi driver told me that he was asked the location of a statue, just a foot tall, depicting two mice sharing a piece of cheese. It’s on the facade of a building in Philpot Lane, on the corner of Eastcheap, not far from London Bridge. https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-test-knowledge.html https://www.nytimes.com/2014/11/10/t-magazine/london-taxi-te...