📖Definition
In these questions, you are given four 4-letter words and the number codes for three of them. You have to work out which number represents which letter and then use the code to answer questions. The first question will usually ask you to work out the code of one of the given words. This may or may not be one of the given codes.
✏️Example
BLED WELD OWED BLOW
2136 1346 5421
What is the code for WOOL?
Knowledge Required
No knowledge is required just an ability to spot patterns and break codes. Practising this is worthwhile as once each code is cracked, the following questions are relatively easy to answer.
✅How To Answer
It's basic detective work!
Method
First of all, look at the words. Do they have any similarities?
Diagram
Yes, two of them begin with 'B' and three of them end in 'D'. That means, if we had the codes for ALL FOUR, two of them would start with the same number, and three would end with the same number.
However, we only have three codes so let's take a look at them.
Diagram
Two of them end in the same number, 6, so that must represent the letter D.
Now, let's go back to the words. We said that two begin with 'B' but none of the codes have the same starting letter so the missing code must be one of the words that begin with 'B'. If it was BLOW, then the three codes would all end in the same number (because BLED, OWED and WELD all end in 'D'). They don't, so the missing word must be BLED.
That means that the code that doesn't end in 6, ie. 'D', must represent BLOW so we can fill in the letters.
Diagram
We can deduce that 3 must represent 'E' so now it's a simple exercise to fill in the codes for all the words.
Diagram
It's helpful to write the code out in full as above as you're likely to be asked more than one question.
So the answer to the question, 'What is the code for WOOL?' is simply 1224
✏️Example
LIKE NAIL KILN LEAK
1452 2345 5631
What word does the code 5321 represent?
Start as before and note any similarities in the words.
Diagram
Two of them start with 'L' (LIKE, LEAK) and two have 'I' as the second letter (LIKE, KILN).
Let's have a look at the numbers.
Diagram
Now, none of these have the same first number so either LIKE or LEAN is the missing code.
And, none of the, have the same second number so either LIKE or KILN is the missing code.
So, the missing code must be LIKE.
So, looking at the three words we have, 'L' is the first letter in one, the third letter in another and the fourth letter in the remaining one.
Diagram
So, we need to look for a matching number in those positions in the codes.
Diagram
The only possible number is 5 so that must represent 'L' and we can fill the words in.
Diagram
And we can answer the question 'What word does the code 5321 represent?' by finding the letters that correspond to the numbers.
5321 = LANK
💡Tips/hints
As well as looking for letters appearing in the same place in more than one word, look out for patterns of letters in words. For example:
FEAR and EARL both have the pattern EAR in them. See if you can find a 3 number pattern.
💡Multiple Choice Tip
If you're pushed for time, try and find the code numbers for at least a few letters. In that way, you should be able to eliminate some wrong answers and increase your chance of guessing the correct one.