11+ Verbal Reasoning Methods & Techniques icon

VR Methods & Techniques Study Notes

Move a Letter

📖Definition

In these questions, you're given two words and you must find a letter that can be taken from the first word and added somewhere to the second word to form two new words. You mustn't change the order of the letters in either of the words.

✏️Example

bream con

Knowledge Required

A good vocabulary and good spelling are required for this exercise.

How To Answer

Sometimes you will see straightaway which letter you need to move in which case, that's your answer. If it's not obvious, then work your way through the following method.

Method

There are two parts to solving these types of question. To start with, take the first word and try removing each letter in turn to see which leave behind a proper word.
So, starting with bream and taking out each letter in turn we get: ream beam bram brem brea
So, we have two possibilities, remove the b to leave ream or remove the r to leave beam
Now for the second part. Take each of the possible letters in turn and see if it will fit somewhere in the second word. So, the first possible letter is b. Try it in each position of the second word.
bcon cbon cobn conb
None of those work so try the r. rcon cron corn conr
corn is a word so the answer, if it's a write-in test, is beam, corn and if it's multiple choice it's simply r.