Help me solve puzzles

May 19, 2010 3:19 AM

Any guides on what to look for when solving puzzles?

I'll be doing an assessment next week that involves puzzle solving - the type where there are different shapes or objects or sequences and you have to work out the next one. I've never really been into puzzles and haven't done too well on the test ones from IQ type websites. So what I'm looking for is a guide on "how to think" or what to look for or what to be aware of when trying to solve these types of sequence puzzles. Any other advice on beating an IQ type test would be appreciated. Many thanks in advance.

posted by thesailor to Education (1 answer total)

Best answer: If you haven't already seen it, this thread might have some useful advice.

The sequence-of-shapes type puzzles usually involve figuring out which features remain constant and which features change as you go from one picture to the next in the sequence. If the problem is a 3x3 block, there's usually a progression in each row and/or each column, not one single progression throughout all 9 boxes.

Part of the difficulty is in figuring out how to break down the image into relevant "features" that you can compare between pictures. In some puzzles this step is easy -- the features are things like: which colours are used, how many triangles/squares/circles are present, the orientations and relative positions of shapes.

In others, like the second puzzle linked in that previous thread, the relevant features are less obvious, since there are multiple ways to interpret the image. For example, are the triangles moving around the circle and changing colour? Or are there just three different positions for the pair, that are used once in each row (just as there are three different colourings of the circle in each row)? The best way to get good at this is probably just to practise doing these kind of problems, looking up the answers if you get stuck, until you become familiar with the kinds of features these puzzle setters tend to use.

Remember also that different bits of the picture might be following their own individual patterns, but there won't be any purely random distraction in the pictures. But at the same time, you don't necessarily need to understand everything that's going on in the pattern -- you only need to figure out enough of it to pick the right answer from those offered (assuming it's a multiple choice problem, as these usually are). If you've found a convincing pattern that eliminates all but one option, it probably doesn't matter if there are still some things you can't explain. In the linked example, figuring out what's going on with the circle gets you the answer, and you can ignore the triangles.
posted by logopetria at 4:26 AM on May 19, 2010