Free · no account · about 12 minutes
Free non-verbal reasoning test
24 shape puzzles, six of each of the four kinds below. It adapts as your child goes: a right answer makes the next one harder, a wrong one makes it easier, and there are 6 levels to climb. Hand them the screen and let them answer.
24 puzzles, about 12 minutes. No account, no timer on screen. Each puzzle gets a little harder when your child gets one right, and a little easier when they do not.
This test is visual
Non-verbal reasoning means shapes, so a child needs to be able to see them. There is no version of “which shape completes this pattern” that does not. We have done what can be done: every shape carries a written description a screen reader reads out, the whole test works from a keyboard, and the shapes are filled with stripes, dots or solid black rather than colours, so nothing depends on telling colours apart. We would rather say this up front than have anyone find out the hard way.
The four kinds of puzzle
One worked example of each, with the answer marked. These are made by the same code that makes the test, so they are exactly what your child will meet.
Sequences
Five shapes in a row, with the last one missing. Something changes from each shape to the next, and the job is to say what and carry it on one more step.
Which shape comes next?
The choices
- 1
- Answer
- 3
- 4
How to get better at these. Work through one property at a time: how many shapes, which shape, how it is filled, which way up. Name the change out loud before looking at the choices.
Matrices
A three-by-three grid with the bottom-right square empty. One rule runs across the rows and a different rule runs down the columns, and the missing square obeys both.
Which shape fills the empty square?
The choices
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Answer
How to get better at these. Read across the top row first and work out that rule. Then read down the left column for the other one. Two easy questions beat one hard one.
Analogies
The first shape becomes the second in some particular way. Do the same thing to the third shape.
Complete the pair. Which shape goes in the gap?
The choices
- 1
- 2
- 3
- Answer
How to get better at these. Say the change as a sentence: "it got bigger and turned a quarter turn". Then do that sentence to the third shape before looking at the options.
Odd one out
Five shapes. Four of them share something and one does not. Find the one that breaks the pattern.
Which one is the odd one out?
The five shapes
- 1
- 2
- 3
- 4
- Answer
How to get better at these. Check one property across all five before moving on to the next: all the shapes, then all the fills, then all the counts. Jumping between properties is how these get missed.
No IQ number, and why
This measures the same kind of thinking an IQ test measures. It does not give an IQ score, a percentile, or any comparison with another child, because those only mean something when a test has first been given to a large, representative sample of children the same age. We have not done that, so a number would be invented. You get counts, levels and timings instead: facts about what happened.