The JNVST Analogy Question, Solved Three Ways

What the Question Is Actually Asking

An analogy question gives you a pair of figures or numbers connected by some relationship, then a third item, and asks you to pick the fourth item that completes the pattern the same way. When I sit down with a student over one of these, the first thing I check is whether she can put the relationship into words before she even looks at the answer options. If she can't name it, she's about to guess.

The skill being tested isn't "spotting that two things look similar." It's abstraction — pulling out the one rule that connects the first pair, ignoring everything else about how the shapes happen to look, and applying that same rule to a different starting point.

A Worked Example

Say the question shows a square with two diagonal lines inside it, paired with a square with four lines inside it (making an X plus a plus sign). Then it gives you a triangle with one line inside it, and asks what goes with it. A student who reasons "the second figure has more lines than the first" is on the right track only if she can say exactly how many more, and why. If the rule is "number of internal lines doubles," a triangle with one line pairs with a triangle with two lines — not three, not four. Naming the rule as a number, not a vibe, is what separates a right answer from a lucky one.

A Second, Trickier Example

Number analogies hide the same trap in a different costume. 4 is to 16 as 5 is to what? The tempting shortcut is "square it," giving 25, and that's often right — but past papers also use rules like "multiply by 4" (16 = 4×4, so 5×4 = 20) that produce a different, equally clean-looking number. Both 25 and 20 will usually sit among the answer choices, on purpose. The only way to pick correctly is to test your rule against the first pair fully before applying it to the second.

The Trap Students Fall Into

The most common mistake I see in our own review sessions is a student picking the option that "looks like it belongs" rather than the one that satisfies the actual rule. Exam-setters know this, so at least one wrong option is deliberately designed to be visually or numerically close to the right relationship without matching it exactly.

How I'd Practice This

• After solving any analogy question, write the rule connecting the first pair in one short sentence before checking the answer
• Deliberately solve the same question two ways when a rule feels ambiguous, and see if both ways land on the same option — if they don't, you haven't found the real rule yet
• Keep a small list of relationship types that repeat across past papers: count of lines/sides, rotation, size change, addition of a new part, and mirror flip

The Real Fix

Analogy questions reward a student who slows down for one extra second to name the rule out loud, even silently. That single habit fixes most of the errors I see, far more than solving a larger volume of practice questions without that check.