Non-Verbal Reasoning Similarities

The test shows you two figures that are alike, sometimes three. They share a hidden rule — sometimes one, sometimes several at once. You pick the figure, out of five, that shares all of it.

Some papers call this "Classes like" or "Figures alike".

Here is the part nobody teaches. The examples are meant to look different. Every way they differ is ruled out for you, on purpose. Start there. Those are free marks.

The method

Five beats: cover it, cross it off, say it and test it, kill them, tighten it.

1. Cover it. Hand over the five options. Look only at the examples. Read the options first and you will find a false match.
2. Cross it off. Say out loud everything the examples disagree about. "One is big, one is small. One holds two shapes, one holds three." All of those are now dead.
3. Say it, then test it on every example. Find what they agree on, as a sentence with a noun and a number. "They both hold exactly three squares." Often it takes two: "three shapes in a chain, and the circle in the middle." Stuck? Run the SHAPES+S scan below. Then check every part of your sentence on every example, including a third if there is one. A rule that fits one example is not a rule. The third figure is a check, not more to read. Three-figure questions are easier, not harder.
4. Kill each option out loud. "Not that one, its square is filled in. Not that one, it has four." Saying why beats scanning silently.
5. Tighten it. Two options still standing means your sentence is too loose — you have missed one of the shared rules. "It has small shapes inside" fits several. "The small shapes are the same kind as the big one" fits one.

About 20 to 25 seconds each, once crossing off is a habit.

Rules to watch

Run the SHAPES+S scan across the examples, asking of each: do they agree here?

• S — Shade. White, grey, hatched (thin diagonal lines) or black? The most common change of all. Shades swap, or one shape hands its shade to another. Judge a tone against the figure next to it, not from memory.
• H — How many. Count them. A shape can appear, vanish, split, double, or copy itself to each side.
• A — Angle. A quarter turn clockwise, a half turn, or reflected — flipped over like a mirror? Watch one corner. A turn walks it round the shape. A mirror jumps it straight across.
• P — Place. Moved, traded jobs, or gone inside? A small item becomes the big frame, the middle swaps with the corners, loose shapes tuck into containers, a whole ring shifts one place clockwise.
• E — Edges. A different shape? More sides? A solid line gone dashed?
• S — Size. Bigger or smaller?
• +S — Symmetry. Does the figure fold onto itself? Down the middle, across the middle, or the same upside-down. Fold the whole figure, not just its outline. Worth asking here. "They all fold down the middle" is a real shared rule, and so is "one straight cut into two matching halves", which is the same idea in a different coat.

If none of those agree, the rule is about the parts and how they join. That is the hard end, where most exam questions live.

• How many pieces, and what kinds? Three parts: one triangle, one line, one shape cut in half.
• Which piece is in the middle? In a chain of three, one shape is always the middle link.
• Is one part doing something to another? Pointing at it. Sitting inside it. Matching its kind. Being half its size.
• Is it cut, and how? One straight cut into two matching halves. Two parallel cuts into three strips.
• Are the copies really the same? Same shape, same size, same way up. Or just the same family.
• Do they overlap, or only touch? An overlap shows one outline passing through another.

Watch for these traps

Every wrong option takes the right answer and breaks at least one thing.

• Right parts, wrong place. Much the most common. Every piece is right but one sits wrong. The triangle is the middle link instead of the circle. Say where, not just what.
• One too many, or one too few. Four squares where the rule says three. A shape joined onto the chain. One side fewer. Count with a finger, out loud.
• The right number of the wrong thing. "Three of something" is half the rule and feels like all of it. Say both nouns: three squares, not three shapes. A rounded box looks curvy, but its sides are straight.
• Shaded wrongly. Nothing shaded when one piece should be. Two shaded when one should be. But if the examples shade differently, shading is not the rule.
• Copies that do not match. The rule needs three shapes exactly alike, and one is turned, or resized, or reshaped. "Three of them" is easy to see. "All exactly the same" is not.
• The one that looks most like the examples. It copies a whole layout and gets the rule wrong. Looking alike is not something you can put in a sentence.
• Touching instead of joined. The parts float apart. Or sit on the edge instead of inside. Or touch instead of overlapping. Look at the join, close up.
• Stopping at the first rule you find. When the examples share several rules, the answer has to match every one. An option can obey the rule you said out loud and still break a rule you never said.

Try these yourself

Now have a go yourself — tap the figure that is most like them.

Related

• The complete 11+ question-type guide
• NVR: Odd One Out — the same game the other way round
• NVR: Analogies — copy a change from one pair to another

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.