Verbal Reasoning Move a Letter
A Move a Letter question gives you two words. You take one letter out of the first word and put it into the second. Both must end up as real words. Nothing is ever rearranged.
Look at the five options before you start. They are the letters of word 1, in their printed order. That is true in all 35 of our questions. So the real question is not which letter. It is which position.
Word 1 is always five letters long, so there are only five things to try.
The method
Five beats: cover each letter, shortlist what survives, post it into word 2, try every gap, say both words.
- Cover each letter in turn. Pencil tip on the first letter of word 1. Read the four that are left. Then the second. Then all five, left to right. Do all five even when an early one works.
- Shortlist what survives. Two or three usually leave a real word, because taking a letter out of a five-letter word is easy. A shortlist is halfway, not an answer.
- Post it into word 2. Try the front first. That is where the letter goes about 7 times in 10.
- Try every gap. Not the front? Then walk it along, left to right. Read each attempt.
- Say both words out loud. "Feat. Scare." Two real words, one letter moved, nothing rearranged.
About 30 seconds each.
💡 Worked example
Move one letter from the first word to the second word to make two new words:
swing coop
How to answer
Rules to watch
- Every position gets used. In our bank the moving letter is the 1st letter 10 times, the 2nd letter 10 times, the 3rd 7 times, the 4th 3 times and the 5th 5 times. There is no position you can safely skip.
- The front of word 2 is the likely landing, not the certain one. 24 of 35 land on the front. 10 land in the middle. Just one lands on the end.
- The middle can be anywhere. In track and cave, the r goes in as carve — third slot, not second. Walk the gaps one at a time.
- Word 2 is the decider. Word 1 hands you two or three candidates. Word 2 almost always leaves exactly one, so trust word 2. Its new word is usually a common one.
- Nothing is rearranged, ever. The letters that stay keep their order and the moved letter simply slots in. wing keeps w-i-n-g in order.
Watch for these traps
- "It'll be the first letter." The easiest questions often do use it. The habit gets trained before it is ever tested. Then the harder ones punish it: blend → bend, cheap → chap, quilt → quit. Cover all five positions every time.
- Stopping at the first letter that leaves a real word. Two or three letters usually survive word 1. Feast alone gives east, fast and feat. Only one of those letters also makes word 2 work.
- Only checking word 1. Removing a letter might leave a perfectly good word. But that same letter must also build word 2. Test the pair together, not one at a time.
- Assuming the letter joins the front of word 2. It does 7 times in 10. So the other gaps quietly stop being checked. Nearly a third of our questions put the letter inside: tar → tear, cash → crash, cub → curb.
- Reordering the letters. This looks like an anagram, so it is easy to slide into anagram habits without noticing. Nothing is ever shuffled.
- Rejecting a leftover you would not use. Bran, puck, spat, flan, boar and spar are all real words. All of them are correct answers here. "I don't say that word" is not the same as "that is not a word". Odd leftovers are how the hard questions are made hard.
If nothing works, run down this list rather than guessing:
- Redo word 1 slowly, all five positions, reading each leftover out loud.
- Did you reject a leftover because it sounded odd? Put it back on the shortlist.
- Look at word 2 on its own. What common word is one letter away from it?
- Choose from what is left. Never leave it blank.
Try these yourself
Now have a go yourself — tap the letter that moves across.
✏️ Question 1
Move one letter from the first word to the second word to make two new words:
plant east
The answer is l
plant loses a letter three ways: plat, plan and pant are all words. Only l also works in east, giving least. Three survivors, one answer. This is the ordinary shape of the question.
✏️ Question 2
Move one letter from the first word to the second word to make two new words:
clean tar
The answer is e
take e out of clean to get clan, then put it inside tar to get tear. The letter went into the middle, not the front. Try the front, see it fail, and keep walking.
✏️ Question 3
Move one letter from the first word to the second word to make two new words:
think ban
The answer is k
think gives thin. Then k goes on the end of ban to make bank. This is the only question in our bank where the letter lands on the end. So do not go hunting for it. Just do not forget the last gap exists.
✏️ Question 4
Move one letter from the first word to the second word to make two new words:
brush cub
The answer is r
brush gives bush with the r out. Then cub becomes curb, with the r in the third slot. The first two gaps fail: rcub and crub are nothing. Walk the gaps in order and it turns up.
Related
- The complete 11+ question-type guide
- VR: Letter Connections — one letter finishes one word and starts the next
- VR: Complete the Word — rebuild a word that has lost a chunk
- VR: Make a Word — build the middle word from two outer words
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.