Letter patterns are quite common in ACER exams. There is one overarching process to answering these questions being:

1. Try to detect an existing pattern among the options in the question
2. Then apply that pattern to find the solution.

Pattern detection relies on you visually finding a evident pattern quickly and then resorting to other uncommon patterns types if you don't find a pattern quickly. There are a few things to keep in mind for pattern detection. These are:

• Don't consider a 'whole' word for granted – the question may be treating them as 'individual' words.
• Words can go up or down units of the alphabet
• Patterns of units of alphabet can exist horizontally too.
• Some letters can be 'dummy' letters
• Patterns can also be movement of word letters
• Letters can also be dropped at the beginning or at the end (pattern of -1).

Here is a general process:

Look at the question and, if appropriate:

1. Treat each letter within the group as a separate letter - letters work like numbers, they can go up by units, down by units, skip units etc…
2. Decide if the relationship/pattern could possibly be
3. Within the group itself e.g. ABC, FGH, ZAB OR
4. Outside of the group e.g. ABC, BCD, OR
5. A combination of the both
6. Once pattern is detected, apply it to find the answer.

Make sure that you:

• Count units correctly
• Can clearly see the pattern instead of making one up
• Spend the allocated time

Example of Strategy in Action:

What are the missing letters in the following series

ZZZ XYB VXD TWF ____

(A) UVG (B) UUU (C) RVH (D) RUH

Correct answer is (c) RVH

Why?

• Look at the relationship outside of each group
• First letter of each group jumps down by two letters
• Second letter of each group jumps down by one letter
• Third letter of each group jumps up by two letters

The video will go through the below four examples:

What are the missing letters in the following series

NE PD RC TB VA ____

** (A) WZ (B) WX (C) XU (D) XZ **

What are the missing letters in the following series

AZD CBF EDH GFJ ____

** (A) IGL (B) IHL (C) FJH (D) HGL **

What are the missing letters in the following series

ZZZ XYB VXD TWF ____

** (A) UVG (B) UUU (C) RVH (D) RUH **

What are the missing letters in the series below?

OPPYP _____ PPYPO PYPOP

A: PUPYO

B: PYOPO

C: PYPPO

D: POPPY

E: none of these

Key Rules to remember:

• Individual letters vs. word as "1" letter
• Pattern existing within the word and/or outside of the word group or letter group
• Units increase/decrease by individual letters or across lettesr.
• See that patterns that already exists, don't make one up using pre-conceived ideas – the answer is actually present and you'll get an 'ah-ha' moment when you know that you've chosen the correct answer.

Now it's time to do your assignment.

1. Download the assignment question here.
2. Print it out or if you want to do it electronically, save it.
3. Complete the questions to it.
4. Then check the solutions on the video below.
5. If you want the written answers (instead of the video), you can download them here.