11 plus Hidden Word questions

What a Hidden Word question looks like

Hidden Word is one of the letter puzzles that 11 plus verbal reasoning papers use. Your child is given a short sentence, and somewhere in it a real four-letter word is hiding across the join between two words that sit next to each other. The word starts inside one of them and finishes inside the next, so it is never visible as a word on the page.

The five options are the pairs of neighbouring words from that sentence, taken in order. So the thing your child ticks is a pair of words, not the hidden word. That catches children out the first few times: they find the word, feel finished, and then have to work out which option to choose. Capital letters and names are just letters here, so HAND hides quite happily across “with Andrew”.

Here are three, worked through in full.

The question. “Both older sisters go to ballet.” The options are the five pairs: Both older, older sisters, sisters go, go to, and to ballet.

The method. Start at the first gap, between “Both” and “older”. Take the last letter of “Both”, which is H, and the first three letters of “older”, which are OLD. That gives HOLD, a real word, and it runs straight across the gap.

The answer. Both older, because botH OLDer hides HOLD.

Why a wrong option tempts. “to ballet” looks promising, because BALL is sitting right there. But BALL is buried inside “ballet” on its own and never crosses the gap between the two words, so it does not count. The four letters that do cross that gap give “toba” or “obal”, and neither is a word.

The question. “She will sweep our dirty floors.” The pairs are: She will, will sweep, sweep our, our dirty, and dirty floors.

The method. Working along the gaps in order, the word “our” is worth a second look, because it is already a word but only three letters long. Borrow one more letter from a neighbour. The P on the end of “sweep” goes in front of it and makes POUR.

The answer. sweep our, because sweeP OUR hides POUR.

Why a wrong option tempts. “our dirty” contains “our” as well, so a child who has spotted the three letters has two options in front of them that both look right. The test is which side the fourth letter comes from. P in front gives POUR. The D behind gives “ourd”, which is nothing at all. Here the extra letter has to come from the word in front.

The question. “Much effort goes into good work.” The pairs are: Much effort, effort goes, goes into, into good, and good work.

The method. At the first gap, one letter from “Much” and three from “effort” gives “heff”, which is not a word. So try a different cut in the same place. Two letters from each side gives CH and EF, and that is CHEF.

The answer. Much effort, because muCH EFfort hides CHEF.

Why a wrong option tempts. “goes into” jumps out, because INTO is a real four-letter word and it is right in front of you. But it is one of the sentence’s own words, whole and unbroken, so it never straddles a join. A word you can already read in the sentence is never the answer.

How to answer it

1. Read the sentence once so you know what it says, then stop treating it as a sentence. From here it is a line of letters, and what it means will not help you.
2. Go to the first gap between two words and try three cuts: one letter from the word in front with three from the word behind, then two and two, then three and one. Those are all the four-letter words that can cross that gap.
3. Say each attempt to yourself. Most will be nonsense, and nonsense is quick to throw away. Keep going until one sounds like a real word you could look up.
4. Move to the next gap and do the same, in order, so that you never skip one. A six-word sentence has five gaps, and the hidden word is at one of them.
5. When you have the word, check that it really does cross the gap, then tick the pair of words it lies across. The pair is the answer, not the word.

Common mistakes

• Picking a word that sits inside one word. BALL in “ballet”, RINK in “drink”, NEAT in “beneath”. These are the first things a child sees, because they are whole and easy to read, and they are exactly what the question is not asking for.
• Choosing a word the sentence already contains. INTO in “goes into” and HARD in “on hard” are real four-letter words, but they sit there complete. The answer has to be built from parts of two words, so anything you can already read is out.
• Trying only one of the three cuts. Most hidden words take one letter from the front word and three from the next, so children learn that shape and then miss the rest. CHEF comes out of muCH EFfort, two and two. DARK comes out of ceDAR Kindling, three and one. If one and three gives nothing, there are still two cuts to try at that gap.
• Finding the word, then ticking the pair next door. The options overlap, so every middle word appears in two of them. A child who has found POUR in “sweep our” can still tick “our dirty”, because that option contains “our” too.
• Reading for sense. These sentences are built to hide letters, not to tell a story, so some are odd: “He must heap eels into buckets” is doing its job perfectly. Working out what the sentence is getting at wastes time that should go on the gaps.

How to practise 11 plus Hidden Word questions

This is one of the more mechanical eleven plus question types, and that is good news, because it means the method is most of the marks. A child who scans every gap in order, trying all three cuts at each one, will find the word almost every time. A child who stares at the whole sentence hoping something leaps out will be fast on some questions and stuck on others. Short, regular sessions are what turn the first habit into second nature, and wide reading helps around the edges by building the stock of four-letter words a child recognises instantly. 11+ Daily has a Hidden Word project among its verbal reasoning skills, with questions original to 11+ Daily rather than taken from past papers, and the Today screen decides when to bring the skill back so it comes round alongside everything else. You can see where 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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