11+ Verbal Reasoning: Alphabetical Order and Letter Puzzles

Knowing the alphabet well is at the heart of many verbal reasoning questions, and some 11+ papers test it directly: putting words in alphabetical order, finding a letter by its position, comparing the letters of different words, or making new words from the letters of a longer one. There is no single national 11+ test: grammar schools and local areas choose their own tests, and the formats vary (many use papers in the GL Assessment style, others CEM-style tests), so the exact question types you meet depend on where you apply.

These questions look easy, and that is exactly why they cost marks. Words such as stream, strain, stretch, strap and straw share their first three letters, so the order depends on the fourth or fifth; Oliver comes before Olivia because E comes before I; though comes before thought because the shorter word is the start of the longer one. This material trains the habit of comparing letter by letter until the first difference. For letter positions, you learn landmarks — E is 5, J is 10, O is 15, T is 20 — and the rule that counting on or back does not include the starting letter, so you can find the letter halfway between F and P, or the fifth letter from the end, without writing out the whole alphabet. Other puzzles ask which letter appears twice in one word and once in two others, or what is left when the letters of one word are crossed out of another.

Word-making questions ask which word can, or cannot, be made from the letters of a longer word such as TEMPERATURE or DICTIONARY. The key rule is that a letter can be used only as many times as it appears, so SHAPES cannot be made from SHAPELY. Every puzzle is original and was checked by script so that only one answer works.

The quiz has twelve puzzles across these types. The flashcards give the rules, the landmark positions and quick practice items. The printable written work asks you to order lists, explain each decision and show your counting. In the oral exam, the examiner sets one puzzle at a time, asks how you decided and ends with brief feedback. The material is aimed at pupils in Year 5 and Year 6 preparing for a selective school entrance test.

• Put words that begin with the same letters into alphabetical order
• Find letters by their position in the alphabet, counting on and back
• Compare the letters of different words
• Decide which words can be made from the letters of a longer word
• Explain the decision that fixes each position in an order

Practice material written by Zestly for 11+ verbal reasoning (Year 5–6 entrance level); all puzzles are original. Formats of 11+ tests vary by area and school.