General Intelligence and Reasoning: Pattern Speed
General Intelligence and Reasoning tests logical speed rather than syllabus knowledge: analogies, number and letter series, coding-decoding, blood relations, direction sense, syllogism, ranking and non-verbal reasoning.
Patterns to recognise
- Number series: check differences, ratios, squares/cubes, alternating operations and primes. For letter series, write A=1 to Z=26 and watch forward and backward jumps.
- Coding-decoding: identify whether the code uses letter positions, opposites (A↔Z), constant or changing shifts, or word reversal. Apply exactly the same rule to the target word.
- Blood relations: draw a family tree; mark male and female members separately, use horizontal links for spouse or sibling and vertical links for parent-child.
- Direction: fix north at the top; a right turn is 90° clockwise, a left turn is 90° anticlockwise; use Pythagoras for the shortest distance.
- Syllogism: draw minimal Venn diagrams; a conclusion is valid only if it is true in every possible diagram.
Worked example
If CAT is coded as 3120, code DOG. Letter positions: C=3, A=1, T=20, so CAT becomes 3-1-20 and then 3120. For DOG: D=4, O=15, G=7, giving 4-15-7 and then 4157. The reasoning is position concatenation, not addition, so check the number of digits before choosing an option.
Traps that cost marks
Assuming a series is arithmetic when it alternates; reversing left and right after a turn; missing that “only a few” in syllogisms means some but not all; and treating coded letter shifts as constant when they change by position.