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How to Answer 11+ NVR Reflection & Rotation Questions

A reflection or rotation question shows you one figure and gives you an instruction: reflect it in a mirror line, or turn it by a quarter, half or three-quarter turn. Your job: pick the option showing the figure after the move.

This type feels alien at first because it asks you to move a picture in your head — something school rarely practises. But it is the most learnable NVR type of all, because there are only a handful of moves, and each one has a fixed effect you can memorise: a vertical mirror swaps left and right; a horizontal mirror swaps top and bottom; a quarter turn sends the top to the side. The figures themselves barely matter — an arrow, a triangle, a dot in a corner — because the checklist features that move are always the same: shape, size, shading, number, position, direction. In this type, shape, size and shading usually stay put; only position and direction dance.

Master the handful of moves and every question becomes the same thirty-second routine.

The method

  1. A mirror swaps left and right — the top stays the top. Imagine folding the page along the mirror line. (A horizontal mirror does the reverse: top and bottom swap, left stays left.)
  2. Pick one small detail, like an arrow tip, and work out where the mirror sends it. Check the answers against just that detail first — one tracked point kills most wrong options.
  3. Decide: flipped like a mirror, or spun like a wheel? A reflection swaps left and right; a rotation moves everything around. Name the move before you look at a single option.
  4. For turns, use the clock. A quarter turn clockwise sends "pointing up" to "pointing right"; a half turn sends everything to the opposite side.
  5. For double instructions, do one move at a time. Mirror first, then turn — write the in-between figure in your head before applying the second move.

A worked example

A reflection question: an arrow pointing right stands beside a vertical mirror line. Options A to D show arrows pointing left, right, down and up.

Reflect the figure in a vertical mirror line. Which is correct?

  1. The figure is an arrow pointing right. The instruction is a vertical mirror — so left and right swap, top stays the top.
  2. Track one detail: the arrow's tip points right, so the mirror sends it to point left.
  3. Check the options against that single detail. A points left — correct. B still points right: that's the unchanged figure. C points down and D points up — those are quarter turns, not reflections.
  4. One option matches the move.

Answer: A

The rules you'll meet

Only a handful of moves appear, alone or in pairs:

The traps

Mirror versus rotation. The classic. A right arrow reflected points left — but so does a right arrow given a half turn. On some figures the results differ, and the options include both. Always apply the move that was asked, not the one that gives a familiar picture.

The wrong mirror. Vertical mirror, horizontal flip — easy to swap under time pressure. Say it as an action first: "vertical line, so left-right swap."

The unchanged figure. The original is nearly always among the options. Mirrors and turns almost always change a figure that isn't symmetric — if your answer looks identical to the start, check your move.

Second-move slip. In doubled instructions, applying both moves to the original instead of chaining them. The second move acts on the result of the first — build the in-between picture.

Related

All example questions come from the Brainblox question bank — practise this question type inside 15 arcade games, timed mock exams and focused practice. Brainblox is an independent app: not affiliated with, endorsed by or licensed by any exam board, school or assessment publisher, and it contains no past papers.