What does a child have to do to complete a word with a letter in the 11+?

Supply a letter that makes a valid word under the stated constraint. It is one of 26 named verbal reasoning skills in the 11+, in the word strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.

What is the trap in an 11+ complete a word with a letter question?

A letter that makes a fine word out of the left-hand fragment tells you nothing until you have tried it on the right-hand one. 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.

What is not part of complete a word with a letter in the 11+?

The skill map draws the line here: One insertion or replacement. A question past that line is testing a different named verbal reasoning skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.

Which other 11+ skills should we practise alongside complete a word with a letter?

The word strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to complete a word with a letter are find a hidden word, follow a word ladder and form a compound word. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.

How can my child practise complete a word with a letter for free?

Use One letter, 3 rows, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to complete a word with a letter, 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.

Verbal Reasoning · Word

Complete a word with a letter

Supply a letter that makes a valid word under the stated constraint.

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

Find the one letter that finishes the word on the left and starts the word on the right. The same letter has to work in all 3 rows.

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.

Testing a letter on both sides at once

The same letter finishes the first word and starts the second: SE ? WO. Which letter is it?

Work one pair through and see why the first word never decides it.

T
E
A
S

Answer: T

How you get there

T works on both sides of every pair: SET and TWO. E is the option worth talking about, because SEE is a perfectly good word, so it survives the first word and then dies on the second, EWO, which is not one. That is why the letter has to be tested on BOTH sides of every pair at once: the left-hand word alone never decides it.

Why the other answers tempt

A letter that makes a fine word out of the left-hand fragment tells you nothing until you have tried it on the right-hand one.

If they are stuck, say this

Try each option on the left-hand word first, then carry the ones that work across to the right-hand word. Only one letter survives both.

Now do it live in One letter, 3 rows

What this exercise is doing

One letter, 3 rows

Find the one letter that finishes the word on the left and starts the word on the right. The same letter has to work in all 3 rows.

The letter in the gap is doing two jobs at once: it is the last letter of the word on the left and the first letter of the word on the right. Here it is P, giving MAP and POET, HOP and PEN, SHOP and PEA. The efficient way in is always the left-hand fragment, because a word can only end in a handful of letters, while lots of letters can start one. Build a short list of letters that finish the left-hand word, then test that short list on the right. With more than one row the letter has to survive every row, so a letter that clears the first row and fails the second was never the answer, however good it looked. Working the two sides in that order turns a search through the whole alphabet into a search through two or three letters.

What to say if they get stuck

Start on the left of the first row. Say MA and try each letter on the end of it until you hear a word.
A letter that works in one row is only a candidate. Carry it down to the next row and see whether it still works there.
There are 5 letters that finish MA on their own, so test those first rather than working through the alphabet.

Open One letter, 3 rows on its own page to share it

Related verbal reasoning skills

All verbal reasoning 11+ skills

Questions parents ask about complete a word with a letter

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.

: Supply a letter that makes a valid word under the stated constraint. It is one of 26 named verbal reasoning skills in the 11+, in the word strand, and this page carries 1 interactive exercise that practises it.
: A letter that makes a fine word out of the left-hand fragment tells you nothing until you have tried it on the right-hand one. 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. Try each option on the left-hand word first, then carry the ones that work across to the right-hand word. Only one letter survives both.
: The skill map draws the line here: One insertion or replacement. A question past that line is testing a different named verbal reasoning skill, which is worth knowing before you spend a week practising the wrong one.
: The word strand holds 9 skills that are tested together, and the pages next to complete a word with a letter are find a hidden word, follow a word ladder and form a compound word. Each has its own exercise and its own link, and none of them needs an account.
: Use One letter, 3 rows, embedded on this page. It is the exercise the skill map attaches to complete a word with a letter, 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.

Verbal reasoning is a set of question types, not a subject to revise

A free diagnostic works out which of the codes, analogies, word puzzles and logic types are already secure, and which are not.

Start the free 11+ diagnostic