Practice for aptitude tests

Logical reasoning test practice: syllogisms, ordering and must-be-true

Timed logical reasoning: syllogisms, ordering puzzles and must-be-true questions. A new paper every sitting and the working for every answer. Free.

Have a test date? Make a practice plan to your test date: which days to practise, a calendar file, and questions this device has not been given before. It is kept on this device only if you ask.

How this drill works

The drill deals 12 questions on a 9-minute clock, 45 seconds a question. Each one gives a few short statements about an everyday situation, an office, a depot or a club, and asks which conclusion must be true. Syllogisms and if-then questions always offer “None of these follows” as the last option, and sometimes it is the answer.

There are three kinds of question, dealt in near-equal shares from easier to harder. Syllogisms relate groups with all, some and no. If-then questions chain conditions together. Ordering puzzles place five names in a row from a handful of clues, and exactly one arrangement fits them all.

Every question in the drill was proved in advance by checking every possibility: a syllogism against all the ways its groups can overlap, an if-then question against every combination of its facts, and an ordering puzzle against all 120 arrangements of its names. So each question has exactly one option that follows, and the review can show you why each of the others does not.

You need no calculator and no outside knowledge. The situations are invented so that what you already believe about offices or trains can neither help nor mislead you: a conclusion counts only if the statements force it. When the clock stops you see your count, your pace against the 45 seconds, and the reasoning for every question.

The drill in brief

Format

A few short statements and four or five options: the one that must be true, or “None of these follows”.

Question types

Syllogisms with all, some and no; if-then statements; ordering puzzles with five names.

Questions and clock

12 questions in 9 minutes.

Calculator

Not needed.

Result

How many you answered correctly, your pace, and the reasoning for every question. No percentile or pass mark.

Whose test

Original questions in the common format, not any publisher’s test.

One question of each kind, worked

These three are written for this page and are not in the drill. Try each before reading the answer.

A syllogism

An if-then question

An ordering puzzle

Three costly mistakes

• Turning an “all” statement round. “All the couriers carry scanners” does not make every scanner carrier a courier. If an option reverses a premise, test it against a case where the larger group has other members.
• Running a condition backwards. “If the library is open, the café is open” says nothing about the library on a day the café is open. Only the café being closed tells you something about the library.
• Choosing what is likely instead of what must be. A conclusion that sounds sensible is not enough. Look for a way the statements could all be true while the option is false; if you find one, the option does not follow.

Getting faster without guessing

For a syllogism, sketch the groups as circles and try to draw a case that breaks the option. For an ordering puzzle, start from the clue that fixes a position, here Eli last, and place the pairs that move together next. Writing the five slots as dashes saves more time than it costs.

Arguments in everyday language, with the named fallacies that make them go wrong, are on the logical fallacies guide and the untimed spot-the-fallacy test; the untimed logical set has twenty questions of these three kinds, every answer explained.