11 Plus Exams Forum

Dear Patricia and Mike and other tutors,

Please could you give your expert advice on how to answer Type Z questions, where no precise information is given, just "more than" or "less than", "south of" or "north of"

If I may please give two examples from The Tutors CD Volume 1

Q19:
Valencia is south of Tarragona and Barcelona is north of Valencia. Tarragona is south of Barcelona.

Only one of the following statements is true:

A Valencia is fifty km from Tarragona
B Barcelona is north of Valencia and south of Tarragona
C Valencia is south of Barcelona and north of Tarragona
D Tarragona is south of Barcelona and Valencia
E Tarragona and Valencia are south of Barcelona


and

q 25

The herbalist sold different teas. Mint tea was more popular than camomile, but less popular than cranberry. Cranberry tea was more popular than rosemary but less popular than sage tea.

Only one of the following statements is true:

A Mint tea was the most popular
B Rosemary tea was more popular than cranberry tea
C Sage tea was less popular than any other tea
D Sage tea was more popular than any other tea
E Cranberry tea was the least popular


We can eventually work them out, but was wondering if you could give us any tips on how best to arrange the working out.

I would use a vertical line and place the 'things' on it taking one statement at a time.

e.g. the first one

'Valencia is south of Tarragona ...'
T

V

' and Barcelona is north of Valencia'.
T
.............. B
V .......... V at this point we are not sure how B and T compare but:

'Tarragona is south of Barcelona'.
so
B
T
V

then see which statement is true
(a) is clearly dodgy as no distances have been mentioned! etc

Leave until last!! I told my DS to ignore them and come back only if time, which I knew there wouldn't be. To me they seemed so much effort for, presumably, just one point. I hope and pray the answers aren't weighted. I confess we didn't do very many. They vary so much and we didn't agree with some of the answers. Although they are designed to test logic they're not all strictly logical themselves, we found. In fact they made my blood boil at times.

Sorry, I haven't got any further advice except use a line for these.

Dear Jays Darlin

Whenever I see the words bigger than, better than, taller than, weighs more than, more popular than, etc I put them in a horizontal line using the bigger than sign > Putting the 'things' in 'size' order.


The herbalist sold different teas. Mint tea was more popular than camomile, but less popular than cranberry. Cranberry tea was more popular than rosemary but less popular than sage tea.

Only one of the following statements is true:

A Mint tea was the most popular
B Rosemary tea was more popular than cranberry tea
C Sage tea was less popular than any other tea
D Sage tea was more popular than any other tea
E Cranberry tea was the least popular

S > Cr > M> Ca Rosemary could go anwhere to the right of Cr

Answer is D, Sage tea was more popular than any other tea.


And yes, as Mum007 stated, all Zs should be left until last [guessed in case there is not time to go back] These 'time wasters' only receive 1 mark, the same as all other questions.

Patricia

I agree with Mum007 - skip Z type questions but make sure you put something in the box incase there is no time to get back to them.

My DS sat the kent test recently and did just that and had time to get back and look at them.

I found that these tricky little(!) questions caused the most frustration when we did a practice, so gave him the above advice thus avoiding any upset which I found affected subsequent questions.