📖Definition
In these questions a four-letter word has been 'hidden' in a given sentence. It is 'hidden' at the end of one word and the start of the next.
✏️Example
Before eating lunch, don't forget to scrub your hands!
Knowledge Required
Knowledge of how words are formed and which letters combine to make words.
✅How To Answer
You're looking for 4-letter combinations that are split over words like so:
xxxXXX Xxxx xxxXX XXxxx xxxX XXXxxx
xxxXXX Xxxx xxxXX XXxxx xxxX XXXxxx
It's always a good idea first of all to look through the sentence and see if the hidden word jumps out at you.
If that doesn't work, then take a more methodical approach looking at each 4-letter combination in turn.
Some you'll be able to reject straightaway, for example those that start with an impossible combination of letters.
And, as almost all 4-letter words contain at least one vowel (A-E-I-O-U) or failing that, a Y, you can reject any combinations that are made up entirely of consonants.
So, in the sentence above, the word pairs we need to look at for the hidden word are:
Diagram
Your knowledge of how words are formed should tell you that the letter patterns used in the 4-letter combinations highlighted in red in the table above don't occur in English so can be immediately rejected.
Hopefully, you'll spot that ruby is the hidden word.
If there's no obvious hidden word, then look for the most likely.
💡Multiple Choice Tip
As the multiple choice answers, you'll be given five pairs of consecutive words from the sentence so you only need to look for the hidden word in those pairs, not in the whole sentence.