Select the figure that violates the shared visual rule.
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
Four of these belong to the same club. Drag them in - then put the odd one on the pedestal.
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.
Find the rule first, then the exception
Which one of these four figures breaks the rule that the other three follow?
Four figures, three of which follow one shared rule.
Each figure is a single closed shape with a number of dots inside it.
A white hexagon with five dots inside it
A white triangle with three dots inside it
A grey square with four dots inside it
A grey pentagon with five dots inside it
Answer: A white hexagon with five dots inside it
How you get there
Look for what three of them share before you go hunting for what is wrong. The triangle has three sides and three dots. The square has four and four. The pentagon has five and five. So the shared rule is that the number of dots matches the number of sides. The hexagon has six sides but only five dots, so it is the one that breaks the rule.
Why the other answers tempt
Colour looks like a rule and is not one here: two figures are white and two are grey, so shading splits the set down the middle and cannot single anything out. A rule has to hold for exactly three of the four.
If they are stuck, say this
Do not start by looking for the odd figure. Find a rule that three of them obey, then test the fourth against it. If your rule only covers two, it is the wrong rule.
Four of these belong to the same club. Drag them in - then put the odd one on the pedestal.
Odd-one-out puzzles hide the rule in ONE attribute, and everything else is noise. Run through them one at a time - shape, fill, how many, angle. Shape is different for all five, so it cannot be the rule. Count and angle repeat on both sides, so they cannot be it either. Only the fill lines up: four striped, one solid. Find the attribute that splits the group 4-and-1 and you have found the rule.
What to say if they get stuck
Drag a card into The Club. If it belongs, it slides into a seat all by itself.
One card keeps getting pushed back out. What do the four that fit have in common?
Forget the shapes and how many there are - look at what is INSIDE each shape.
How identify a visual odd one out differs from the skills beside it
The same exercise practises one other skill, and telling them apart is often the difficulty rather than the exercise itself. On this page the skill is: select the figure that violates the shared visual rule, and it stops where one shared rule and one exception.
Questions parents ask about identify a visual odd one out
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.
Select the figure that violates the shared visual rule. 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.
Colour looks like a rule and is not one here: two figures are white and two are grey, so shading splits the set down the middle and cannot single anything out. A rule has to hold for exactly three of the four. 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. Do not start by looking for the odd figure. Find a rule that three of them obey, then test the fourth against it. If your rule only covers two, it is the wrong rule.
The skill map draws the line here: One shared rule and one exception. 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 pattern strand holds 5 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to identify a visual odd one out are compare visual attributes, complete a visual matrix and complete a visual series. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
Use The Club, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to identify a visual odd one out, 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.
