Reasoning practice
Patterns, relationships and elimination. No knowledge required, which cuts both ways.
10 questions, 10 minutes, one mark each with nothing deducted for a wrong answer. Every explanation shows the working, so a question you get wrong is worth more than one you get right.
Reasoning practice
Questions written for this site to practise on. They are not from any real examination and no exam body is connected to them — every answer can be checked by hand from the explanation.
- Questions
- 10
- Minutes
- 10
- Max marks
- 10
- Sections
- 1
About reasoning
Reasoning questions test whether you can spot the rule that generates a sequence, the relationship inside an analogy, or the odd item in a set. Nothing has to be memorised, so there is nothing to fall back on if the rule does not come.
Most series questions fall to one of three checks: look at the differences, look at the ratios, then look at whether each term is built from its position. 2, 6, 12, 20 has differences 4, 6, 8 — and is also n(n+1). Either route gets you there.
Elimination is a real technique rather than a last resort. Odd-one-out questions often have three items sharing two properties and one sharing only one; finding what three have in common is faster than working out what the fourth lacks.
Where marks get lost
- Stopping at the first pattern that fits.
- Check your rule against every term given, not just the last two. A rule that explains 5 → 11 and fails on 11 → 23 is the wrong rule.
- Answering the distance you walked rather than the distance you are away.
- Direction questions usually want the straight line. North 4 km then east 3 km leaves you 5 km away, not 7 — draw it and look for the right angle.
- Reading a blood-relation question too quickly.
- Take the phrase apart from the inside out. “My mother’s only child” is the speaker, so what follows is about her, not a sibling.
- Assuming the odd one out differs in the obvious way.
- In 3, 5, 7, 9, 11 every number is odd — the shared property is not the answer. It is 9, because the others are prime.