Logic puzzles

Drawing a grid for "who lives where" style questions. Stop trying to hold it in your head.

Every logic puzzle rewards the same move: get it OUT of your head and ONTO the page. A quick drawing in the margin beats holding five facts in your brain, every single time.

Remember it like this

“Draw it, don't hold it in your head.”

Slots for ordering puzzles, boxes in a row for seating puzzles, two circles for overlap puzzles.

Ordering puzzles — slots, certainties, chains

Step 1 · draw the slots

_ _ _ _ _

Step 2 · fill certainties

"Dina was last" → slot 5

Step 3 · place the chains

Aisha before Carlos before Ben

The two-circles trick (overlap puzzles)

30 pupils: 18 play football, 15 play tennis, and everyone plays at least one. How many play both?

  1. 18 + 15 = 33 — but there are only 30 pupils
  2. The extra 3 are the pupils counted twice — once in each sport
  3. So 33 − 30 = 3 play both

3 pupils

⚠ Watch out

Logic puzzles are the most expensive questions on the paper — a hard one can eat three minutes. If a multi-condition beast resists after 90 seconds, guess, flag it, and come back at the end. Ten vocabulary marks cost less time than one logic mark.

Remember it like this

“Solved it? Run the answer back through every clue.”

Logic puzzles are the one question type you can fully check in ten seconds — spend them.

✏ Your turn

Carlos finished before Ben but after Aisha. Dina was last and Eli was second. Who won the race?

Show the answer
  1. Five slots. Certainties first: Eli 2nd, Dina 5th
  2. The chain Aisha → Carlos → Ben must fit slots 1, 3 and 4 in order
  3. So Aisha is 1st, Carlos 3rd, Ben 4th

Aisha

For parents — the full topic guide

Analogies, Odd One Out & Logic Puzzles — 11+ VR Topic Guide

Part of the GrammarMock topic guides. Drill with the Analogies and Logic Puzzles mini-tests.

Word analogies: name the relationship FIRST

"PETAL is to FLOWER as LEAF is to ___?"

The method that works: before looking at the options, say the relationship as a sentence. "A petal is a PART OF a flower." Then reuse the sentence: "a leaf is a part of a... TREE." Children who look at the options first get seduced by associations (STEM, GRASS); children who name the relationship first walk past the traps.

The relationship families GL uses (teach your child to spot which one they're in):

  1. Part → whole (petal:flower, rung:ladder, stanza:poem)
  2. Young → adult (cub:lion, fawn:deer)
  3. Worker → workplace/product (baker:bread, sculptor:statue, actor:stage)
  4. Tool → action (pen:write, palette:paint)
  5. Object → group name (flower:bouquet, bird:flock, cattle:herd)
  6. Word → synonym or antonym (hot:cold as wet:dry)
  7. Need → satisfier (parched:water, famished:food)
  8. Instrument → what it reveals (microscope:small, telescope:distant)

The trap in every analogy: an option strongly ASSOCIATED with the third word but in the wrong relationship. For LEAF the option TREE (part-of ✓) beats BRANCH (associated but a leaf isn't a part of a branch in the same clean way) and GREEN (associated, wrong relationship entirely).

Odd one out: find what the FOUR share

"oak, pine, rose, birch, elm — which is the odd one out?"

Reverse the thinking: don't hunt for the weird one, hunt for what four of them have in common. Four are trees; rose is a flower.

The hard versions hide the category one level deeper:

  • Function: sword, spear, arrow, axe (attack) vs shield (defence)
  • Property: violin, piano, guitar, cello (strings) vs trumpet (no strings)
  • Dimension: square, circle, triangle, rectangle (2D) vs cube (3D)
  • Meaning: happy, joyful, cheerful, delighted vs miserable (an antonym planted among synonyms)

If two different categorisations both seem to work, GL intends the more specific one. And a useful exam habit: the odd one out is rarely the first word listed — examiners bury it.

Logic puzzles: the drawing habit

Every 11+ logic puzzle rewards the same move: turn the words into a picture in the margin.

Ordering puzzles ("Carlos finished before Ben but after Aisha; Dina was last; Eli was second") → draw five slots, fill in the certainties first (Dina 5th, Eli 2nd), then place the chain A < C < B in the remaining slots 1, 3, 4. Answer questions from the completed picture, never from re-reading the text.

Seating/houses puzzles ("the blue house is between the red and yellow...") → boxes in a row, pencil in the fixed points (ends first), then the relative clues. If a clue can go two ways, try one; a contradiction later means flip it.

Two-set overlap puzzles ("30 pupils, 18 play football, 15 play tennis, all play at least one — how many play both?") → the inclusion-exclusion move: 18 + 15 = 33 counts the both-players twice, so both = 33 − 30 = 3. Draw two overlapping circles if the numbers get bigger.

Ratio/sharing logic ("Amy spent twice as much as Ben; Cara spent £3 more than Ben; together £27") → write everything in terms of ONE person (Ben): b + 2b + (b+3) = 27. The skill is choosing the person everyone else is described relative to.

Age puzzles → now/later table (see the Algebra guide).

Truth check, always: when the puzzle is solved, run the answer back through every clue in the question. Logic puzzles are the one question type where full verification takes ten seconds — spend them.

Timing strategy

Logic puzzles are the most expensive VR questions per mark — a hard one can eat three minutes. In the exam: do the ordering/seating ones (fast once drawn), and if a multi-condition beast resists after 90 seconds, guess and flag it for the end. Ten vocabulary marks beat one logic mark bought at the same time-price.

One-week plan

  • Days 1-2: analogies — say the relationship aloud before the options, 10 a day
  • Day 3: odd one out, including the buried-category versions
  • Days 4-5: ordering and seating puzzles WITH margin drawings (mark the drawing habit, not just the answer)
  • Day 6: overlap (Venn) and sharing puzzles
  • Day 7: Logic Puzzles mini-test, timed

Ready to practise this topic?

Try a full paper — questions on logic puzzles show up in most 11+ maths and VR papers.

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