Combine row or column rules to select one missing figure.
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.
Practise it now
Build the missing piece. Two rules are hiding in this grid - one runs across, one runs down.
Loading the interactive exercise. Nothing you do here is saved or scored.
A worked example
One question of the kind this skill is tested with, worked all the way through: the reasoning, and what the wrong answers are there to catch.
Reading a grid two ways
Read this grid along its rows, then read it again down its columns.
Across each row of this grid, every step means two places anticlockwise round the circle. Down each column, nothing changes at all.
a dot at the lower right of the circle
a dot at the lower left of the circle
a dot at the upper left of the circle
a dot at the upper right of the circle
Answer: a dot at the upper left of the circle
How you get there
Across each row, every step means two places anticlockwise round the circle. Down each column, nothing changes at all. The empty corner has to obey both of those at once, so it must be a dot at the upper left of the circle.
Why the other answers tempt
Copying the figure next to the empty corner is the commonest slip. The corner has to keep moving, not stay put.
If they are stuck, say this
Work out what one step to the right does, then what one step down does. The empty corner needs both of them.
Build the missing piece. Two rules are hiding in this grid - one runs across, one runs down.
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.
What to say if they get stuck
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.
The 11+ does not test these skills in isolation, and practising one in the wrong order wastes the practice. These are the skills the curriculum map connects this one to.
How complete a visual matrix differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises several skills, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: combine row or column rules to select one missing figure, and it stops where at most two independently stated visual rules.
Questions parents ask about complete a visual matrix
Answered from what the skill map records about this skill, not from a template. Every answer here is on the page, and the same questions are the page's FAQ structured data.
Combine row or column rules to select one missing figure. It is one of 22 named non-verbal reasoning skills in the 11+, in the pattern strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
Copying the figure next to the empty corner is the commonest slip. The corner has to keep moving, not stay put. The wrong answers on this skill are built out of that, not out of random numbers, so it is worth naming out loud before your child meets it under time pressure.
Point at the next move rather than explaining the whole rule. Work out what one step to the right does, then what one step down does. The empty corner needs both of them.
The skill map draws the line here: At most two independently stated visual rules. A question past that line is testing a different named non-verbal reasoning skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
The skill map connects it to track order and position. A matrix may compose a positional exchange rule. That skill has its own page here.
Use Matrix Machine, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to complete a visual matrix, it runs in the browser with no account to make, nothing is scored, and nothing a child does here is recorded or sent anywhere. It also has its own link, so you can send it to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
Non-verbal reasoning is the paper families most often leave until last
A free diagnostic covers matrices, series, odd one out, rotation, reflection and the 3D questions, and shows where the time is worth spending.
