Verbal Reasoning · Codes & Ciphers
Code Wheel
Work out the secret turn, then code the word MAP.
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.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
Why this works
Every letter moved the same amount: 3 steps forwards around the alphabet. That is why even one of the example cards is enough to give the whole secret away - once you know K → N, every other letter follows. To code a word you just repeat that one turn on each letter, and when you run off the end of the alphabet you wrap back round to the start, which is exactly what the wheel does for you.
Helping a child through Code Wheel
Hints, least revealing first
- Turn the outer ring until KIT lines up with NLW. The example cards glow when it is right.
- Look at just one letter: K became N. How many steps around the alphabet is that?
When they finish it: “Message coded!”
What usually goes wrong here
- Stops at Z instead of applying the stated alphabet wrap-around.
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 apply a letter shift, the fix is the misunderstanding rather than more questions.
3 11+ skills this exercise practises
Each of these has its own page, with a worked example on it. 2 of the 3 name the mistake that skill attracts.
- Locate an alphabet positionTranslate between a letter and its ordinal alphabet position.
- Apply a letter shiftApply one positional alphabet shift, including wrap-around when stated.
- Decode a letter-word codeInfer a positional substitution rule and apply it to one new word.
You can reuse this. Here is exactly how far that goes
Tutors, teachers and editors keep asking, so this is the answer in writing rather than by email. You do not need to ask permission, and you do not need to tell us.
- Embed it
- Put the exercise inside your own page with the code above. It stays playable, and it keeps working when we improve the engine behind it.
- Print it
- Print the page, or print the exercise off the screen, and hand out the copies. No limit on how many.
- Use it in class
- One child or a full set, in a school, in a tutoring session, in a homework club, or at the kitchen table.
- Put it in something you charge for
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- Reuse it in your own writing
- Quote it, rewrite it, translate it, cut it up, or build something different on top of it. Treat the wording, the worked examples and the question ideas as yours to work with.
The one thing we ask is a link back to the page you took it from, so a reader can find the live, playable version and the rest of the 11+ skills next to it. That is a request, not a condition: nothing above depends on it.
This covers the interactive exercises and the teaching notes on these 11+ pages. It does not cover the Trace Learn name or logo, and it does not let you present your version as something Trace Learn published.
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.
The embedded copy has no header, no footer and no sign-up prompt. It records nothing about the child using it, on your page just as on ours.
One exercise is a start, not a plan
A free diagnostic across all four subjects shows which verbal reasoning skills to practise next, and in what order.