Analogy Questions and Answers

Answer: A

The answer is Judiciary.

Parliament is the body that makes up the legislature, the law-making branch of government. In the same way, the courts make up the judiciary, the branch that interprets law and decides disputes. Both pairs are an institution and the branch of government it forms.

The executive is the third branch, which carries out the law, and is formed by the government and its ministers, not the courts. Governmental and legal are adjectives, not names of a branch, so they break the pattern of the second pair.

Answer: D

The word that fits is vain.

The first series climbs in intensity from merely sick to infirm to moribund (close to death). The second must climb in the same way from silly to daft: the middle word should mean foolish, a step between the two. Vain in its older sense means foolish or senseless (as in 'vain hopes', 'vain talk'), which fits the slot.

Frown is a facial expression and fawn means to flatter or a young deer; vein is a blood vessel. All three are sound-alike distractors with no link to foolishness.

Answer: C

The word is Recommend.

To protest is to act on one's disagreement, expressing it openly and actively. The parallel for agreement is to recommend: to act on one's approval by commending something to others. Both pairs move from an attitude to the outward action that follows from it.

'Refuse' and 'refute' express rejection, the opposite of agreeing, and a 'pretext' is a false reason given to hide the real one, unrelated in meaning.

Answer: A

The word is bicker.

The first sequence rises in intensity: drizzle is light rain, and a downpour is heavy rain. The second must do the same for disagreements: to bicker is to argue over petty things, a quarrel is a more serious angry argument, and a feud is a long and bitter hostility.

A bog is wet ground, to dither is to hesitate, and to dodge is to avoid something; none is a milder form of a quarrel.

Answer: A

The answer is Child.

In the first pair, planting is the act of putting a seed into the ground so that it can grow. Read by word meaning, raising in the same sense is bringing up a child, looking after it until it grows. Both pairs join an act of nurturing to the living thing that is nurtured.

One can also raise a temperature or a height, but that is the other sense of 'raise', to increase, and nothing grows from it. 'Lift' is a synonym of 'raise' in that second sense, not something that is raised, so it breaks the pattern of action and object.

Answer: A

The word that fits is reprove.

The first set climbs in intensity: a smile, then a giggle, then a full laugh. The second set must do the same between disapprove (the mildest, an inner judgement) and chide (to scold openly). To reprove is to express disapproval, a gentle rebuke, so it sits between the two.

'Praise' runs in the opposite direction. 'Reprise' means a repetition of a piece of music or performance, and 'grieve' means to feel sorrow; neither is a step on the scale from disapproval to scolding.

Answer: A

The answer is Pride.

A shoal is the collective noun for a group of fish, and a pride is the collective noun for a group of lions.

'School' is another collective noun for fish, so it belongs on the first side of the analogy, not with lions. A forest is a place, not a group of animals, and 'series' is a general word for things in sequence with no link to lions.

Answer: A

The matching pair is Cycling : Velodrone.

Golf is played on a course: the pair is sport : the place where it is played, in that order. Track cycling is raced in a velodrome (spelt 'Velodrone' in the paper), so Cycling : Velodrome has the same relation in the same order.

Ring : Boxing has the right relation but in reverse order (place : sport). Baseball is played on a diamond or field, not a rink, which is for ice hockey and skating. Judo is practised on a mat in a dojo, so Judo : Arena does not match as precisely.

Answer: A

JG441 is related to EB484.

Each letter moves 5 places back in the alphabet, and the number, a perfect square, becomes the next perfect square:

So the answer is EB484. FB464 and EB464 have the wrong number (464 is not a square), and FB648 has both the wrong letter and the wrong number.

Answer: B

Water is related to Refraction.

A mirror is the classic example of reflection, light bouncing back from a surface. Water is the everyday example of refraction: light bends as it passes from air into water, which makes a stick look bent and a pool look shallower than it is.

Conduction is the transfer of heat or electricity through a material, dispersion is the splitting of white light into colours, best shown by a prism, and immersion is placing something in a liquid, not an optical effect.