Alphabet Test Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Correct answer: 4

Subtracting one from each number gives

Q 1 2 B 8 V 4 L S R F P

There are twelve items, so the tenth from the right is the third from the left, which is 2.

Four to the right of that position is the seventh item, which is 4.

The subtraction must be done first: in the original series the third item is 3 and the seventh is 5, so working on the unaltered series gives the wrong answer at both steps.

Answer: C

Correct answer: 3

Keeping the letters of HEARTLESS in order and using each once, the word divides into three: HE, ART and LESS.

All nine letters are used, none is repeated and none is moved out of sequence. The obvious two-way split into HEART and LESS is a correct division too, but the question asks for the greatest number of independent words the letters will yield, and breaking HEART into HE and ART gives three.

Answer: A

Correct answer: Four

Number the letters of HORIZON and their alphabet positions: H(8) O(15) R(18) I(9) Z(26) O(15) N(14). A pair qualifies when the count of letters between them in the word equals the count between them in the alphabet, and four pairs do. H and N have five letters between them in the word (O, R, I, Z, O) and five in the alphabet (I to M). R and the second O have two in the word (I, Z) and two in the alphabet (P, Q). R and N have three in the word (I, Z, O) and three in the alphabet (O, P, Q). And the second O and N are adjacent in both, with none between. Note that only H–N runs in the same direction in the word as in the alphabet, so a solver taught to count forward pairs alone would answer one.

Answer: A

Correct answer: O

Take the letters at the stated positions in OVERWHELMED: the 1st is O, the 3rd E, the 5th W, the 6th H and the 8th L.

Those five letters - O, E, W, H, L - rearrange to make WHOLE, and no second word can be formed from them, so neither the fallback M nor X applies.

WHOLE has five letters, and its middle letter is the third: O.

Answer: B

Correct answer: Two

The test is that the gap between two letters in the word equals the gap between them in the alphabet, with the second letter also later in the alphabet.

In INTERNATIONAL two pairs qualify: I and N at positions 1 and 6, five apart in the word and five apart in the alphabet (9 and 14); and N and T at positions 2 and 8, six apart in both (14 and 20).

Several other pairs match by distance - O and N, T and R among them - but run backwards alphabetically, so the sequence condition excludes them.

Answer: C

Correct answer: X

Reversing the second half leaves the series A B C D E F G H I J K L M Z Y X W V U T S R Q P O N. Counting from the right, the seventeenth letter is J, which stands tenth from the left. Counting seven places to the right from J - taking J itself as the first - gives J, K, L, M, Z, Y, X, so the letter arrived at is X. The stem’s phrase “in the middle of 7th and 7th letter” is garbled in this record; the arithmetic that yields the keyed letter is the one shown.

Answer: C

Correct answer: E

The series has twenty-six letters, so the eleventh from the right is at position

\[ 26 - 11 + 1 = 16 \]

Counting into W Q E T R Y I P U O A G S D F H..., position 16 is H.

Thirteen to the left of H is position 3:

\[ 16 - 13 = 3 \rightarrow E \]

Working in positions rather than counting letters twice keeps the two steps independent.

Answer: B

Correct answer: EXERCISE

EXPERIENCE contains the letters E, X, P, E, R, I, E, N, C and E - no S anywhere.

EXERCISE requires an S, so it cannot be formed however the remaining letters are arranged.

The other three all can: PRICE, RICE and NICE draw only on P, R, I, C, E and N, each of which the source word supplies. Checking for a letter that is simply absent is faster than attempting to build each word.

Answer: B

Correct answer: M

Twenty-one letters counted from the end run from Z back to F, that is positions 6 to 26. Twenty from the beginning run from A to T, positions 1 to 20.

The sequence common to both is F to T, positions 6 to 20, and its middle is

\[ \frac{6+20}{2} = 13 \rightarrow M \]

The two counts overlap rather than join end to end, which is the step the question is really testing.

Answer: B

Correct answer: L

The midpoint of positions 5 and 19 is

\[\frac{5 + 19}{2} = 12\]

The twelfth letter of the alphabet is L, which sits seven places after E and seven places before S.