11 plus Complete the Word questions

What a Complete the Word question looks like

Complete the Word is one of the letter puzzles that 11 plus verbal reasoning papers use. Your child reads a short sentence in which one word is printed in capitals. Three letters in a row have been taken out of that capitalised word, and those three letters spell a small word on their own, in the same order. Five options are given and every one of them is a real three-letter word, so “is it a word?” does not narrow anything down. Only one option rebuilds the capitalised word and leaves the sentence making sense.

Here are three, worked through in full.

The question. “Her SLET coat stood out in the crowd.” The options are CAR, TOR, COT, ARC and RAG.

The method. Read the sentence and ignore the options at first. A coat that stood out in a crowd is probably a bright colour, and SCARLET starts with S and ends with LET. Take CAR out of SCARLET and what is left is S and LET, which is exactly what is printed.

The answer. CAR, giving S[CAR]LET.

Why a wrong option tempts. ARC is made of the same three letters as CAR. A child who has got as far as “the missing letters are A, R and C” but has not checked the order will take it, and end up with SARCLET, which is not a word. In this question type the order of the three letters matters just as much as which letters they are.

The question. “My sister watches the same CARN every morning.” The options are TON, TOO, OAT, NOT and TOE.

The method. Something a sister watches every morning, beginning CAR and ending N. CARTOON fits. Cover TOO in CARTOON and you are left with CAR and N, which is what the sentence prints.

The answer. TOO, giving CAR[TOO]N.

Why a wrong option tempts. TON is very tempting, because CARTON is a real word and it looks like the right shape. The trap is that every printed letter has to stay. The N at the end of CARN is still there, so TON gives CARTONN, not CARTON. The three letters you choose are added to the ones printed, never swapped for them.

The question. “Gran spent two nights in HOSAL after her fall.” The options are PAT, TIP, POT, PIT and PET.

The method. Where does someone spend two nights after a fall? Hospital. Spell it out: H, O, S, P, I, T, A, L. Cover the P, I and T and you are left with HOS and AL, which is the printed word.

The answer. PIT, giving HOS[PIT]AL.

Why a wrong option tempts. PAT, POT and PET are each one vowel away from PIT, and HOSPATAL, HOSPOTAL and HOSPETAL all look nearly right at a glance. TIP is the same three letters in the wrong order. If a child is not certain how HOSPITAL is spelt, four of the five options stay in play, which is why this type rewards secure spelling.

How to answer it

1. Read the sentence and work out what the capital word must mean, before looking at the options at all. The sentence is the clue, not the letters.
2. Say the whole word to yourself and spell it out letter by letter. That is the step children skip, and it is the one that does the work.
3. Line your spelling up against the printed letters and find the run of three that is missing. It can be near the start, in the middle or near the end.
4. Check that those three letters, in that exact order, are one of the options. If they are not, the guessed word is wrong, so go back to step one.
5. Read the sentence back with the finished word in place, to be sure it still makes sense.

Common mistakes

• Starting with the options. Trying each of the five in turn is slow, and it invites a child to accept the first one that looks vaguely word-shaped. Working out the word from the sentence first turns a five-way guess into a check.
• Right letters, wrong order. CAR and ARC, PIT and TIP, TEN and NET. Options built from the same letters rearranged appear again and again, and they catch a child who solved the puzzle but read their answer back the wrong way round.
• Losing one of the printed letters. In CARN, a child who thinks “carton” quietly drops the final N. The printed letters all survive into the finished word.
• Expecting the gap in the middle. MET becomes MARKET and NEST becomes NEAREST, with the gap right after the first letter. FORD becomes FORWARD and NOTD becomes NOTICED, with the gap near the end. There is no marker showing where it falls.
• Spelling by sound. BALCONY and MANAGER both have options that follow the sound rather than the spelling, and both look convincing to a child who has heard the word more often than they have written it.

How to practise 11 plus Complete the Word questions

This question type rewards two things at once, which is part of why it is set: reading a sentence for its meaning, and knowing how words are actually spelt. Both are built mostly by reading and by writing words out, not by drilling eleven plus puzzles, so the practice that helps most sits outside the question type itself. What regular practice does add is speed and the habit of going to the sentence first. 11+ Daily has a Complete the Word project among its verbal reasoning skills, with questions original to 11+ Daily rather than taken from past papers, and the Today screen decides which skills to bring back on a given day so this one comes round alongside the rest. You can see how it sits with the other word and letter puzzles on the 11 plus verbal reasoning page, and there is more on session length in our guide to how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day.

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