11 plus Insert a Letter questions

What an Insert a Letter question looks like

Insert a Letter is one of the letter puzzles that 11 plus verbal reasoning papers use. Your child is shown two pairs of word fragments, each pair with a gap between its two halves. One letter goes into the gap, and it has to finish the fragment on its left and start the fragment on its right, making two real words. The same letter then has to do exactly the same job in the second pair. Five letters are offered and only one works in all four places, so the first pair usually narrows the field and the second pair decides.

Here are three, worked through in full.

The question. pain ( ? ) ail wan ( ? ) urn. The letters offered are T, D, G, R and K.

The method. Start with the first pair and say each offered letter on the end of pain. Paint works and pair works, so t and r are both still in. Now try those two on the other side of the same gap: t makes tail, r makes rail, and both of those are real words too, so the first pair has not settled anything. Take t and r to the second pair. Want is a word, “wanr” is not, so r drops out. Last check: t on the front of urn gives turn.

The answer. T, giving paint and tail, want and turn.

Why a wrong option tempts. R solves the whole of the first pair. Pair and rail are both real words, so a child who works through one pair and stops has an answer that feels finished and complete. It is the second pair that rules it out. In this question type a letter has to work four times, not twice.

The question. sta ( ? ) ing doo ( ? ) oad. The letters offered are r, y, b, m and t.

The method. Nothing here is a word yet, so there is nothing to recognise, only to build. Put each letter on the end of sta: star, stay and stab are all real, so r, y and b survive and m and t go. Now the other half of that gap. Ring is a word, “ying” and “bing” are not, so only r is left. Check it on the second pair before answering: door, and then road.

The answer. R, giving star and ring, door and road.

Why a wrong option tempts. Y and B both make a real word out of sta. A child who checks only the left of the gap ends up with three letters that all look right, and picks whichever they thought of first. Every gap has two sides, and a letter has to satisfy both of them.

The question. drea ( ? ) ake crea ( ? ) oan. The letters offered are t, k, d, n and m.

The method. Try the letters on drea. Dream works and dread works, so m and d are the two to carry forward. On the right of that gap, m gives make; d gives “dake”, which is not a word, so d is gone already. Take m to the second pair: cream, and then moan.

The answer. M, giving dream and make, cream and moan.

Why a wrong option tempts. D makes dread, which is a real word and a slightly less obvious one than dream, so it can feel like the cleverer find. Nothing follows it. “Dake” is not a word and neither is “cread”. A letter that makes one good word and three non-words is still the wrong letter.

How to answer it

1. Work on the first pair to begin with. Add each of the five offered letters to the end of the left-hand fragment and say it out loud. Keep only the ones that make a real word.
2. Take the letters that survived to the right-hand side of the same gap. Most of them will fall away here, because a letter that ends one word rarely starts the next one as well.
3. Try whatever is left on the second pair. This is the step that picks the answer when two letters have got through the first pair, and it is the step children skip.
4. Read all four finished words back in order before choosing. If any of the four is not a word you could use in a sentence, the letter is wrong.
5. If nothing works, check that you have not silently changed a printed letter. Every letter shown stays exactly where it is; you are only adding one.

Common mistakes

• Answering from the first pair alone. In pou ( ? ) iver boa ( ? ) oast, the letter t gives pout, boat and toast. Three real words out of four, and a child who has seen the second pair working stops there. But “tiver” is not a word, and the answer is r: pour, river, boar and roast.
• Checking only the left of the gap. The letter has two jobs, ending one fragment and starting the next. A child who finds stay and stops has done half the question.
• Expecting the fragments to be words already. Sta, drea, crea and pou are not words on their own. Because there is nothing to recognise, some children assume the question is harder than it is and start guessing instead of building.
• Working through the whole alphabet. Saying the words aloud is the right instinct, but only five letters are offered, so there are only five to test. Starting at a and running to z wastes most of the time the question is given.
• Accepting a near word. “Bing”, “dake” and “cread” all sound like they could be something. If a child cannot use the word in a sentence, it does not count.

How to practise 11 plus Insert a Letter questions

This type rewards a habit more than it rewards knowledge: check every gap, from both sides, before committing. That habit is quick to build and it transfers to the other letter puzzles, so a few of these questions regularly is worth more than a long session of them once. Reading aloud helps too, because a child hears “wanr” is wrong faster than they see it. 11+ Daily has an Insert a Letter project among its verbal reasoning skills, with questions that are original to 11+ Daily and are re-checked in rounds rather than taken from a past paper, and the Today screen decides when this skill comes round again alongside the rest of the eleven plus work. You can see where it sits among the other word and letter puzzles on the 11 plus verbal reasoning page, and there is more on how long a session should be in our guide to how much 11 plus practice a child needs each day.

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