Verbal Reasoning Test

About this test

Verbal reasoning measures two things at once, and it is worth knowing that before reading your score. First, vocabulary knowledge, which depends enormously on what you have read and on the language you grew up in. Second, logical discipline — the ability not to conclude more than the statement permits. So this is not a measure of intelligence: it is an exercise in attention to meaning, and it improves with practice.

The most frequent mistake never involves vocabulary; it involves the logic of quantifiers. "Every cat in the house sleeps on the sofa" forbids no other animal from sleeping on that sofa. The statement constrains the cats, not the sofa. Reverse that direction and you produce a false conclusion with total confidence — and heavy readers make that error just as often as anyone else.

For analogies, one method is enough and it almost never fails: turn the opening pair into an explicit sentence before you look at the options. If "foot" is to "shoe" becomes "a shoe is what you put on a foot", then "glove" is forced and "ring" falls away at once, however strongly a ring is linked to a hand. Association and logical relation are not the same mental operation.

How it works

Eighteen questions across four families: analogies, odd ones out, word relationships and deductions from statements. Exactly one answer is correct each time, and your score is the percentage you got right. The full breakdown appears at the end, question by question.