Logical Reasoning Test

Questions start easy and end with a puzzle that catches most people. You get the answer and the reasoning after each one. Free, no sign-up, no time limit.

Deductive reasoning is working out what must be true when you accept some statements as given. If all roses here are red and this is a rose, it is red. No guessing, no outside knowledge.

The test mixes four kinds of problem. Syllogisms combine "all", "some" and "no" statements. Conditionals use "if... then". Ordering puzzles ask you to line people or objects up from clues. And two questions test counting and consistency, where you must track what every statement allows.

The hard part is rarely the logic itself. It is resisting conclusions that sound right. "Some pilots are teachers" feels like it follows from the pilot question. It does not, and spotting that is exactly the skill being tested.

Reasoning with rules sits close to the centre of what intelligence tests measure. Many IQ and aptitude tests include verbal deduction items like these, and scores on reasoning tasks tend to correlate well with overall IQ.

Our full IQ test does not use words for this. Its rule application questions show you a visual rule and ask you to apply it to a new case. The skill underneath, holding a rule steady and following it without drifting, is the same one you used here.

A 12-question test is far too short to estimate IQ, and this one has not been normed on a population. Treat your score as a snapshot of how you handled these particular puzzles.

Affirming the consequent. "If it rains, the match is cancelled. It was cancelled, so it rained." It sounds natural, but the match could have been cancelled for another reason. The valid move runs the other way: no cancellation means no rain.

Belief bias. People accept conclusions that sound plausible and reject ones that sound odd, regardless of whether they follow. A useful check is to swap the words for letters: "All A are B. Some B are C." Does "some A are C" follow now? It is easier to see that it does not.

Write the positions as blank slots and fill in the fixed clues first (far left, middle). Then place the clue that has the fewest options. On the bookshelf question, green could only go in two places, and only one of them left room for blue. After that the last book has one slot left.