Non-verbal Reasoning · Solids & Views
Block Builder
Some cubes are buried where you cannot see them. Spin the model and work out how many are hidden.
Free to use and free to share. There is no sign-up, no score, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. What you may do with it, in full.
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Why this works
Counting a solid means counting what you cannot see. This model has 15 cubes in total and 1 of them are completely buried - a buried cube has cubes on all four sides of it and a cube on its roof, and its base is flat on the table, so no face of it is left showing however far you spin the model. Work stack by stack from the plan, never from the picture alone.
Helping a child through Block Builder
Hints, least revealing first
- Drag to spin the whole model right around. If you can spot a cube from ANY side, it is not hidden.
- A cube is hidden when it is walled in on all four sides with another cube on top of it. Only the plan grid can prove it.
- Count every cube first, then count the ones you can actually see. The gap between them is the hidden pile.
When they finish it: “Found the buried ones!”
What usually goes wrong here
- Counts only visible cubes where support implies hidden cubes.
This is the wrong answer 11+ papers are built to offer, so it is worth watching for directly: a child who does this will look confident and still lose the mark. If it keeps happening on count cubes in a structure, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
11+ skill this exercise practises
It has its own page, with a worked example and the mistake that skill attracts.
All non-verbal reasoning 11+ skillsYou can reuse this. Here is exactly how far that goes
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Embed this exercise
Paste this into your own page and the exercise runs there, playable, for your readers or your students. It is 900 pixels tall by default and as wide as the column you put it in; change the height if your layout wants a different one.
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Block Builder practises one skill. Non-verbal Reasoning has 22 of them
A free diagnostic covers every non-verbal reasoning skill and the other three subjects, and comes back with a shortlist rather than a list.