Verbal Reasoning · free 11+ practice
Verbal Reasoning 11+ skills
26 named verbal reasoning skills, grouped the way the 11+ actually tests them. Every one of them has an interactive exercise you can open and play right now, with no account and nothing recorded.
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.
- named verbal reasoning skills
- 26
- playable exercises
- 21
- strands in this paper
- 10
- and no sign-up
- £0
Try it before you read it
A verbal reasoning exercise, playable on this page
One of the 21 verbal reasoning exercises below, running here in your browser. Nothing is scored and nothing is saved.
Letter Wheel loads here in your browser. Nothing you do is saved or scored.
Verbal reasoning · Word building
Letter Wheel
Seven letters, sixty seconds, and one word in there that uses every single one.
You have one minute. Make as many words as you can from these seven letters.
Open Letter Wheel on its own pageEvery verbal reasoning skill, strand by strand
Search the list, or read down it. A skill with a link has something to play behind it.
All 26 skills, listed below.
Alphabet (2)
Analogy (2)
Classification (1)
Code (5)
- Apply a letter shiftApply one positional alphabet shift, including wrap-around when stated.1 exercise
- Apply mirrored alphabet pairingMap letters through a stated or inferred reversed-alphabet pairing.1 exercise
- Apply a number code ruleApply one arithmetic mapping to a letter or number code.1 exercise
- Decode a letter-word codeInfer a positional substitution rule and apply it to one new word.2 exercises
- Follow alternating code rulesContinue a code whose two explicit rules alternate.1 exercise
Grid (1)
Language (1)
Logic (2)
Sequence (1)
Vocabulary (2)
Word (9)
- Apply a word transformation ruleApply one stated letter-level transformation rule to form a valid target word.1 exercise
- Complete a word with a letterSupply a letter that makes a valid word under the stated constraint.1 exercise
- Find a hidden wordLocate a continuous target word across a bounded letter string.1 exercise
- Follow a word ladderChange one permitted letter at each step while preserving valid intermediate words.1 exercise
- Form a compound wordJoin two supplied word parts to make a conventional compound.1 exercise
- Form a derived wordForm one valid new word from a supplied base using the permitted letter operation.2 exercises
- Move a letter between wordsMove one supplied letter from one word to another so both results are valid words.1 exercise
- Identify an impossible word formationDetermine which candidate cannot be formed under a supplied letter rule.1 exercise
- Solve an anagram in contextRearrange all supplied letters into a context-compatible word.2 exercises
Verbal Reasoning exercises you can share
Each one has its own page and its own permanent link. Send a single activity to a child without sending them anywhere else first.
- Dictionary Order
- Letter Wheel
- Mind the Gap
- Code Wheel
- Hidden Word Lens
- Built from DESPERATE
- Letter Conveyor
- Move a Letter Between Words
- Letter Link
- Alphabet Hops
- Letter Shuffler
- Logic Grid
- Break the code FHVW
- One letter, 3 rows
- Number Train
- The Word Family
- Applying a Word Transformation Rule
- Word Bridge
- Placing Words by Constraints
- Cold to Warm
- Word Welder
Verbal Reasoning 11+ questions parents ask
The questions that come up most about this paper, answered plainly. Everything here is on the page and nothing needs an account.
Word and letter puzzles rather than English. Letter codes and alphabet positions, analogies, odd ones out, hidden and compound words, letter and number sequences, anagrams, word ladders, and short logic questions on a few stated facts. That is 26 named skills across 10 families of question here, with 21 interactive exercises.
It is the most revisable of the four papers. Unlike comprehension it uses a finite set of question types, and each type has a method that can be taught in one sitting and then made fast with practice. A child who has never seen a letter-shift code will lose every one of them, and the same child twenty minutes later will get most of them.
Write the alphabet out and number it 1 to 26 before starting. Most code questions are arithmetic on positions, and doing that arithmetic in your head while also holding the rule is what runs a child out of room. With the alphabet in front of them the question becomes "move each letter three forward". Wrap-around from Z back to A is the other half, and it is worth practising on purpose.
All of them, briefly, before any of them deeply. The papers rotate through a known set, and the marks lost are usually on the two or three types a child has simply never met, not on the ones they are slightly slow at. Read down the list below and open anything your child cannot name.
Speed matters here more than anywhere else, because the questions are short and there are a lot of them. Once a method is understood the useful practice is little and often, with a timer, rather than one long session. Every exercise here is built to run in a few minutes for that reason.
All 21 verbal reasoning exercises linked from this page run in the browser, with no account and nothing recorded: shift letters through an alphabet strip, hunt a word hidden across two others, complete an analogy, fit words into a grid. Each has its own permanent link.
Which verbal reasoning skills should your child work on?
A free diagnostic across all four subjects turns this list into a shortlist.