Verbal Reasoning – Alphabet / Word Codes (Type N)
The Alphabet Code question type requires you to match single letters to single digit numbers based on patterns that you identify in the existing words and number codes given to you. After you do this, you will then be asked to either work out a new word from the code, or the new code from the word.
The question and possible answers could be listed randomly, so do not think the first word relates to the first code, instead you need to use logic to work out which number corresponds to which letter. To help you identify this more easily you can focus on the order and placement of letters and numbers – looking to find one letter in one word, the same letter in another word, and then seeing if there are any codes that follow this format.
The code that you work to, meaning the number that you assign to each alphabet letter, must work for all the answers in that section or question.
This type of question is complex right from the beginning, and expects you to actively work the solution out for yourself from a range of possibilities. The skills that it tests you on are:
- Your thinking process, is it measured, systematic and gradual
- Consistency and double checking
- Mapping letters to numbers from words and codes
- Creating a formula by identifying similar elements
- Re-arranging the formula you have created and testing it works
- Confidence in your process even if you do not have all the answers
- Relying on previous answers and formulas to answer future questions
- Placement and position of letters and how that can link to numbers
- Utilising two sources of information to achieve an answer
- Narrowing down the possibilities
This is a difficult question type and a few things can happen including getting confused, not knowing where to start, getting stressed and losing a lot of time. One thing you do need to do is start with 1 letter and 1 number and work from there. Find that letter in the other example words, and see if the codes follow the same order and placement of numbers. Trying to work it out by just looking at the word (not the letters) will be too difficult and you could misread the order and placement of things.
Take another look at what skills it is testing, these can be grouped into the following things you should be able to do:
- Ability to find similarities in the order and placement of letters within words so you can than find the coded / numbered alternative
- Ability to cross-check and prove the formula you create
- Ability to have confidence in the result without having all the information
What do Alphabet Code Questions Look Like?
As you can see from the CGP test example below, the Alphabet Code question type is in the following format:
- Instructions including words and their number codes
- Set of questions
- Area to answer
- 1 mark per question
- Option to write on the line or select from the multiple choice on the answer sheet
Verbal Reasoning – Alphabet Code – Answer Sheet
How do I answer this question?
To answer the Alphabet Code question it really boils down to four steps which are:
- Find the letters to numbers by starting with 1 letter
- Finding the order and placement of the letter in the word
- Seeing which numbers fall in the same order and place in the code
- Reusing the codes to answer the remaining questions once you know which letter aligns with which number
Start with 1 letter
Remember, this is a systematic process and by working in a measured manner can you guarantee that your alphabet to number codes are right and make sense. As you can see in the CGP example M comes at the beginning of one word MEAD and then at the end of another word DRAM.
So checking the number codes we can assume that any number that comes at the beginning of the code and also at the end of the code could possibly be the number for M.
This isn’t guaranteed but it is definitely a good place to start from, so if we look at codes all the codes we can see only 2 which have the same number at the beginning and the end. These are 1435 and 5231, which means:
M = 1
That is good progress so far, don’t wait to note this down somewhere on the question sheet so you don’t forget. That isn’t enough though because remember, we want to be confident that the number codes we are working out are right. So what can we do next?
Check the common letters between both words which share M
Well the most easiest thing to do now is see what other numbers make up the words MEAD and DRAM. If we take a sensible guess that MEAD = 5231 and DRAM = 1435 based on M = 1, then we can check to see if any other letters in those words match and from there, the codes for those letters.
We are going to check to see what other common letters there are across both words. For this example, other common letters would be A and D across both words. In MEAD the letter D is in position 4 and in DRAM it is in position 1. So lets check our code again:
- MEAD = 5231 = D is code number 5
- DRAM = 1435 = D is also code number 5
We can be confident that our code is right and we know the numbers of letters M and D, looking at the above we can also see that A is number 3 as it is in the same position for both MEAD and DRAM (position 3).
Should you carry on working out?
At this stage its easy to want to work out all the numbers for all the letters of the words given to you. But always keep in mind, this is just the code and you still need to answer the question in the shortest time possible.
As you’re working out the code you should also be doing the following:
- Checking to see if you can answer any of the questions (even one)
- Checking to see if you’ve have got enough letters to number codes (you don’t need them all)
- Checking to see if you can re-use the current codes that you have got to answer the existing questions
Remember, you do not need all the alphabet codes, just the ones that answer the question – what you do next is re-use the letters (and the code) putting them in the order that the question requires them to be in. As an example, just by identifying MEAD and DRAM, questions 1 and 2 can now be answered (even question 3!).
How do I work out codes to alphabet?
This is a very common version of this question and it’s there to test your code breaking skills as well as your ability to look at the question differently. By now you should have noted down the letter to number code:
- M = 5
- E = 2
- A = 3
- D = 1
- R = 4
So if we look at question 3, where it asks to get the word from the code we can see that we already have 3 of the 4 numbers. From 6234 we have 234 in our list so we can now build the word – EAR.
Now a neat trick is to quickly look on the multiple choice answer to see what answers have these 3 letters, and on looking we can see only one and that is: WEAR
That is how you answer a question like question 3!
What if I can’t work out the code?
This question, as I have mentioned, can become a big headache, but don’t let yourself get flustered over it. If you can’t work it out all that means is you just haven’t found the 1 letter in the same position or order across different words.
If you don’t do that, then you can’t look at the codes to see which numbers are in the same position and order as the letter is – meaning you won’t get anywhere! Remember you need to:
- Scan over all the words to find the common letters e.g. for DRAM and MEAD the common letters are M, D, A
- Once you have found a common letter note down the position in the word they are in e.g. DRAM = M is in position 4 / MEAD = M is in position 1
- Look at the codes to find a number in the same position as the letter you have found
- Check to see if you can answer even one of the questions