Non-verbal Reasoning · Matrix Reasoning
Matrix Machine
Build the missing piece. Two rules are hiding in this grid - one runs across, one runs down.
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
A matrix hides one rule per direction. Across the rows, the shape stays the same - star, moon, diamond. Down the columns, the count climbs 1, 2, 3 and the fill goes outline, striped, solid. The missing cell sits where row 3 meets column 3, so it must obey both at once: three solid diamonds.
Helping a child through Matrix Machine
Hints, least revealing first
- Read one row at a time, left to right. What never changes along a row?
- Now read one column at a time, top to bottom. Two things change as you move across the columns.
- Row 3 is the diamond row. Column 3 always holds three shapes, filled in solid.
When they finish it: “Machine complete!”
4 11+ skills this exercise practises
Each of these has its own page, with a worked example on it. 1 of the 4 names the mistake that skill attracts.
- Track object countTrack how the number of visual elements changes across figures.
- Track fill and line styleTrack shading, fill, or boundary-line changes while holding geometry apart.
- Compare visual attributesCompare shape, position, angle, number, size, or shading across figures.
- Complete a visual matrixCombine row or column rules to select one missing figure.
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
- A paid course, a paid tutoring session, a paid workbook, a members-only site. You owe us no fee and you do not need to ask.
- 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.
Matrix Machine touches 4 skills at once
Which means a child who struggles with it could be stuck on any one of them. A free diagnostic across all four subjects narrows it to the one.