Verbal Reasoning Number Codes

A Number Codes question gives you four words and three number codes. The codes are jumbled up and one is missing. You work out which digit stands for which letter, then answer the question that was asked.

This is the slowest question type on the paper, and it is meant to be — about 50 to 60 seconds. That time comes back out of the vocabulary questions, which take 20 to 25 seconds each.

The exam often prints one set of words and codes, then asks two or three questions from it. Four of our sets do that. Build the key once, carefully, and you spend it three times over.

The method

Five beats: read which way, find the twins, match their codes and write the key down, kill the odd one, build the answer in order.

1. Read which way round it goes. "Find the code for CORN" turns a word into digits. "Find the word that has the code 3186" turns digits back into a word. Seven of our fifty-two go the second way. Underline which one you have.
2. Find the twins in the words. Look at the words before a single digit. Twins share everything but one letter — TORN and BORN, or STORE and STORM. Remember one word has no code, so what you need is two twins that both have one. Thirty-five of our fifty-two sets have a pair like that. The digits mean nothing until the words have been compared.
3. Match their codes and write the key down the side of the page. Hunt the same shape in the code list: two codes sharing three digits in the same places. Those digits are the shared letters, in order. Put each one down as digit above letter — 5 above O, 4 above R, 7 above N — the moment you win it. Do not draw arrows between the lists: on four words and three codes they turn into a tangle.
4. Kill the odd one out. Test the leftover code against your key. If a digit cannot be what it would have to be, that code is a different word. Knowing which one hands you the rest for free.
5. Build the answer in order. Letter by letter, checking your key at each one. Say the places out loud: "C is 3, O is 5, R is 4, N is 7." Order is the whole test.

Rules to watch

• Words first, digits second. Always. The digits look like the puzzle, but only the words can tell you what to look for.
• Jumbled means jumbled. The two lists sit one above the other, and the eye trusts a layout more than a sentence. Code one does not belong to word one.
• Nothing is left over. Three codes and four words is not a mistake. One word has no code printed, and it is usually the one the question is about.
• When no two coded words are twins. Seventeen of our fifty-two sets. DARK, RANK, BARN, BARK looks like it has a pair — BARN and BARK — but BARK is the word being asked for, so it has no code, and no two codes share three digits. Look instead for a letter in every word and a digit in every code. Both A and R are in every word. Both 6 and 9 are in every code. Position breaks the tie. All four words have A second, and all three codes have 6 second, so A=6 and R=9.
• When the words share all their letters. Two of our sets are full anagrams — STALE, STEAL, LEAST, SLATE. Count instead. Say three words start with S but the codes start 2, 2 and 4. One letter cannot be two digits, so the 4-code is the odd word out.
• The answer is not always one of the four words. In four of our questions the word asked for is not printed at all. DEAN is not one of BEAN, BANE, BEAD, BAND, but all four of its letters are.
• The digits are labels, not places. Letter Codes, the type next door, really does use A=1 up to Z=26. Here 5 means O in this one question and nothing anywhere else.

Watch for these traps

We looked at all 208 wrong options in our bank. One trap accounts for nearly all of them.

• The right digits in the wrong order. 172 of the 180 wrong options on "find the code" questions — over nine in ten. Only one wrong option in the whole bank has a wrong digit. So once your key is right, only the order can beat you. Eighty are your answer with two digits swapped. That is almost impossible to spot by looking. Read your code back against the word, one letter at a time.
• The code written backwards. Seven of the 180, and the tidiest version of the trap above: 7529 offered as 9257. Start from the word's first letter every time.
• On a "find the word" question, another word from the list. Twenty-one of the 28 wrong options there. Every option is a real word, and most are printed in front of you, so nothing looks odd. Each of those questions offers exactly one word that is not in the list. That check kills one option and no more.
• Not writing the key down. Four words, three codes and up to seven letters is more than anyone holds under time pressure. A key kept in your head loses a digit. A lost digit becomes a swapped one.

Try these yourself

Now have a go yourself — tap the code that is right.

Related

• The complete 11+ question-type guide
• VR: Letter Codes — shifting letters along the alphabet, where A really is 1 and Z is 26
• VR: Number Series — spot the pattern and continue it

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.