Verbal Reasoning Compound Words

A Compound Words question gives you two groups of three words. You pick one word from each group that join into a single real word. The group-1 word always comes first.

At school you learned that a compound word puts together the meanings of its parts. Here that does not apply.

OFF + ICE = OFFICE. An office has nothing to do with ice.

You are making a real word, not a sensible one. That one sentence is most of this question type.

The method

Five beats: order and count it, sweep it, say it and ask, see it, stop.

1. Fix the order, and count the job before you start. The group-1 word goes first, every time. Never try it backwards: that doubles the work for nothing. Three starters times three enders is nine joins. Exactly one of them is a real word. It is a small, finished job, not a hunt.
2. Sweep in a fixed order. The first starter with each of the three enders. Then the second starter with each. Then the third. No jumping about. Disorganised searching loses this type far more often than vocabulary does.
3. Say each join in your head, then ask one question only: have I just said a real word? "Bus-cub. Bus-hen. Bus-pet. Car-cub. Car-hen. Car-pet — carpet!" Your ear finds words your eye walks straight past. Never ask whether the two words go together.
4. Now see it. Look at the letters. Every letter of both parts must be there, in order, with nothing added and nothing dropped.
5. Stop at the first real word. Only one join works, so there is nothing to compare it against.

About 20 to 25 seconds each. The ear finds the answer. The eye decides.

What the question promises you

The exam says so itself: exactly one of the nine joins makes a word. So you never have to choose between two candidates. If you have two, one of them is not a word, and the letters will tell you which.

Watch for these traps

• Throwing away a join because it makes no sense. Much the most common, and it is the whole difficulty of this type. Four in ten of these answers are words their parts do not explain — CAR + PET, DON + KEY, DAM + AGE, PAT + TERN, BAR + GAIN, PUMP + KIN. Most of the hardest ones work this way. Ask "is it a word?", never "does it make sense?"
• Skipping the odd little starters. Am. Off. Up. Ear. Don. Ham. Bran. Par. Pat. They do not look like the beginning of anything, so the eye passes over them. Nearly half of these answers start with one. The fixed sweep exists so nothing gets skipped.
• Letting your ear vote no. DONKEY is not said "don-key". OFFICE is not said "off-ice". The sound changes when the parts join, so a correct join can sound wrong. Your ear generates the guesses. Your eye judges them.
• Throwing away a real word you do not know. AMBUSH. BRANDISH. HAMLET. EARSHOT. Built from two little words, they look like accidents. "I have not heard of it" is not "it is not a word".
• Bending the spelling. Every letter of both parts has to survive the join. PATTERN is PAT + TERN, not pat + ern. If you have to add a letter or lose one, it is not the pair.

If the whole sweep finds nothing:

1. Sweep again and move the stress about. You have to hear OFFICE as two pieces to find it.
2. Start from the odd little words, since those are the ones you skipped.
3. Write the letters out. Seeing OFF + ICE on paper finds what saying it missed.

Try these yourself

Now have a go yourself — tap the two words that join to make one word.

Related

• The complete 11+ question-type guide
• VR: Complete the Word — the opposite reflex. There, meaning is your best clue
• VR: Closest Meaning — the same two-group layout, matching meanings instead of letters

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