Non-verbal questions have no words to read, so they are the fastest marks in the paper once you know what to look at. Every one of them is a hunt for a single rule.
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Ask three questions of the row, in this order.
➡️ The three questions
Is it turning? Pick one corner or point and follow it. A quarter turn is 90°, a half turn 180°.
Is something being added or removed? Count the dots, lines or sides in each step.
Is something swapping? Shading, inside and outside, or the order of two parts.
Deal with one change at a time. If a figure both turns and gains a dot, first throw out every option facing the wrong way, then count dots among those that are left. Two easy checks beat one hard one.
A mirror image flips left and right. A water image flips top and bottom.
🪞 How to check one
A mirror on the right or left swaps left with right; up and down stay put.
A mirror below (a water image) swaps up with down; left and right stay put.
In a mirror image of a word the order of the letters reverses as well as each letter flipping.
Some letters do not change at all. In a left–right mirror: A H I M O T U V W X Y look exactly the same. In a water image: B C D E H I K O X look the same. So MUM and TOOT read the same in a mirror.
A mirror image is not a rotation. Turning a figure round can never produce its mirror image — that is exactly what the wrong options in these questions are.
Unfold the paper in your head, one fold at a time, backwards.
📄 Unfolding a punched sheet
Every fold acts as a mirror line. Each hole reappears on the other side of that line, the same distance away.
Undo the folds in the reverse order to the one they were made in.
One fold doubles the holes; two folds make four; three folds make eight.
Counting figures. A 2 × 2 grid of small squares holds 5 squares in all — four small ones and the big one. A 3 × 3 grid holds 14: nine small, four made of 2 × 2, and one whole. Count by size, smallest first.
12 Olympiad questions on figures, mirrors and folding. 🍀
