Acuity is sharpness or clearness of vision, hearing, or thought.

Acumen is the ability to make quick decisions and keen, precise judgments.

An apprentice is someone who trains under a master in order to learn a trade or other skill.

When you describe someone as astute, you think they quickly understand situations or behavior and use it to their advantage.

Someone who is callow is young, immature, and inexperienced; consequently, they possess little knowledge of the world.

You describe someone as a charlatan if they pretend to have special knowledge or skill that they don’t actually possess.

If you are chary of doing something, you are cautious or timid about doing it because you are afraid that something bad will happen.

If you are circumspect, you are cautious; you think carefully about something before saying or doing it.

Credence is the mental act of believing or accepting that something is true.

A credulous person is very ready to believe what people tell them; therefore, they can be easily tricked or cheated.

When you debunk someone’s statement, you show that it is false, thereby exposing the truth of the matter.

When you discern something, you notice, detect, or understand it, often after thinking about it carefully or studying it for some time.

When you dupe another person, you trick them into believing something that is not true.

If you accuse someone of duplicity, you think that they are dishonest and are intending to trick you.

Empirical evidence or study is based on real experience or scientific experiments rather than on unproven theories.

Someone who is erudite is steeped in knowledge because they have read and studied extensively.

A gullible person is easy to trick because they are too trusting of other people.

A heuristic method of teaching encourages learning based on students’ discovering and experiencing things for themselves.

Something that is implausible is unlikely to be true or hard to believe that it’s true.

If an idea or thought is incisive, it is expressed in a penetrating and knowledgeable manner that is clear and brief; additionally, it can demonstrate impressive understanding of related ideas or thoughts.

People who are ingenuous are excessively trusting and believe almost everything that people tell them, especially because they have not had much life experience.

A neophyte is a person who is just beginning to learn a subject or skill—or how to do an activity of some kind.

If someone is objective, they base their opinions on facts rather than personal feelings or beliefs.

Someone is obtuse when they are slow to understand things; someone can choose to be obtuse when they deliberately do not try to figure things out.

Someone who demonstrates perspicacity notices or understands things very quickly.

A Philistine is someone who does not care about and can even speak against the arts; they are considered unintellectual and ignorant—and are proud of it.

A sagacious person is wise, intelligent, and has the ability to make good practical decisions.

If you are sapient, you are wise or very learned.

A skeptic is a person who doubts popular claims or facts about things that other people believe to be true.

A stratagem is a clever trick or deception that is used to fool someone.

A tyro has just begun learning something.

If you behave in an urbane way, you are behaving in a polite, refined, and civilized fashion in social situations.

Wiles are clever tricks or cunning schemes that are used to persuade someone to do what you want.

A yokel is uneducated, naive, and unsophisticated; they do not know much about modern life or ideas because they sequester themselves in a rural setting.