Verbal and Numeric Analogies

Overview

Verbal and Numeric Analogies appears about 2.5 times per paper across the last four AFCAT solved papers, placing it in the highest weight band of Reasoning and Aptitude.

Analogy items in AFCAT Reasoning typically run two to three per paper. Each is worth +3 on a correct mark and −1 on a wrong mark, so a clean two out of three on this topic alone is worth six net marks. The good news is that analogy is a procedural topic. You are not asked to recall obscure facts. You are asked to spot one relation, name it, and reapply it. Almost every analogy question can be cracked inside forty seconds once you train the eye.

The topic has two flavours in AFCAT — verbal analogies, where the pair is two words, and numeric analogies, where the pair is two numbers. Sometimes you also see a three-pair stem of the form a : b :: c : ? :: e : f, and the rule you propose must be true across all three pairs, not just the first. That extra check kills several otherwise plausible rules. Some recent papers also slip in a small word-plus-number hybrid where a city is paired with a year or a planet with its order from the sun. The method below covers all three forms.

This page builds a working catalogue of eighteen verbal relation types and fifteen numeric rule types, then teaches the refine-the-relation tactic for the moments when two options both look correct. You will close with twelve worked examples in the AFCAT flavour and a time budget you can carry into the exam hall.

Why analogies pay AFCAT marks

Three reasons make analogies a high-return topic on AFCAT.

• Speed. A trained reader closes most verbal analogies in fifteen to twenty seconds and most numeric analogies in thirty to forty-five seconds. Compare that with a seating-arrangement set that can swallow three minutes.
• Low knowledge load. The relations repeat across years. Worker-tool, country-capital, square, cube and arithmetic progression cover the vast majority. There is no syllabus to memorise — only a small grammar of relations.
• Negative-marking friendly. Because the relation either fits or it does not, you can usually tell when you genuinely do not know. That makes the leave-or-attempt decision sharp, which keeps the negative score under control.

The flip side is that analogies reward discipline. The candidate who jumps straight to options without naming the relation usually picks a distractor that shares a theme but breaks the link. The next section fixes that habit.

The name-the-relation method

Every analogy obeys the same four-step drill. Run the drill in your head before the eye drifts to the options.

1. Read the first pair. Say to yourself, in one short phrase, what connects them. Examples — worker and tool, animal and young, multiply by three, square then add one.
2. Check the direction. Is the relation a-to-b or b-to-a? Pilot drives aircraft, not aircraft drives pilot. Two is the square root of four, not four the square root of two. Direction matters because options are usually designed to flip it.
3. Apply the same phrase to c. Predict the answer before you look at the options. If your prediction matches an option exactly, that is almost always the answer.
4. Refine if two options fit. Move from a broad relation to a narrower one until only one option survives. This is covered in section seven.

Verbal analogy relation catalogue

Below are eighteen relation families that, between them, account for nearly every verbal analogy AFCAT has set. Skim the table once a week in the final month so the families are pre-loaded when you sit the paper.

Twenty rows are listed — keep the eye trained on the first column. When a stem appears, the family usually announces itself in three seconds.

Numeric analogy rules to test

Numeric analogies are mechanical. You test a short fixed list of rules in order from cheapest to costliest. The order below is roughly the order of frequency on AFCAT.

Sixteen rules are listed; commit them to the eye. When a pair appears, glance at the size jump first — small jump suggests addition or sum-of-digits, a doubling or tripling suggests multiplication, a leap to a near-perfect-square suggests squaring, a leap to a near-perfect-cube suggests cubing.

Three-pair analogies — the rule must hold everywhere

Some AFCAT stems show three pairs — a : b :: c : ? :: e : f. The rule you propose has to fit a-to-b and e-to-f. Only then do you apply it to c to get the missing term.

This is a powerful guard against guessing. If the simple rule that works for the first pair fails on the third, the rule is wrong even if the answer it predicts is an option.

Worked walk-through. Take 6 : 39 :: 8 : ? :: 11 : 124. Test b = a × k + m. From the first pair, 39 = 6 × 6 + 3 — so candidate k = 6, m = 3. Confirm on the third — 11 × 6 + 3 = 69, not 124. The rule fails. Try b = a² + 3. First — 36 + 3 = 39, good. Third — 121 + 3 = 124, good. So the rule is a² + 3, and the missing term is 8² + 3 = 67.

Direction-of-relation check

Half of the verbal traps come from a flipped direction. The relation must run the same way from a to b as it does from c to the answer.

• Pilot : Aircraft :: Captain : ? The first runs operator → vehicle. The answer must also be a vehicle the captain operates, not the operator of a vehicle.
• Eight : Sixty-four :: Nine : ? The first runs number → its square. The answer must be 81, not 3.
• Lion : Cub :: Stag : ? The first runs adult → young. The answer must be the young of a stag (a fawn), not another adult.

A quick verbal cue helps — say the link in a sentence that mentions the order, like a is the parent of b or a is multiplied to give b. The sentence carries the direction with it. If you cannot rebuild the same sentence on the target pair, the option is wrong.

Refine-the-relation tactic

Sometimes two options both seem to fit your stated relation. The fix is to refine the relation — narrow it until only one option survives. Three steps.

1. Make the relation specific. If you said animal and characteristic action, sharpen it to animal and its characteristic land movement. That filter eliminates options that capture sound, food or sleep behaviour.
2. Add a property. If the relation is country and capital, ask whether the country is from the same region as the stem. If a stem pairs an Asian country with its capital, an option that picks a European capital may be a distractor designed to test continent matching.
3. Eliminate by quality not by feel. Reject an option only when you can name the property it fails. Vague rejection ("it just doesn't sound right") is the most expensive habit in this topic.

Worked walk-through. Stem — Cow : Milk :: Hen : ?. Options are Egg, Chicks, Feather, Grain. The broad relation is animal and what it gives. Both Egg and Chicks fit. Refine — the cow gives milk on a daily basis as a product, not as an offspring. The narrower relation is animal and edible product. That selects Egg and eliminates Chicks.

AFCAT-style shifting parameters

AFCAT papers love a tricky numeric form where the multiplier looks constant but the add-on shifts with the input. The trap is to fit the first pair, miss the check on the third, and walk out feeling sure.

Take a sample stem in the AFCAT flavour — 4 : 21 :: 6 : ? :: 9 : 84. Test multiply-then-add — 4 × 5 + 1 = 21, so k = 5 and m = 1. Check on 9 — 9 × 5 + 1 = 46, not 84. The simple rule fails. Try a² + a + 1. First — 16 + 4 + 1 = 21, good. Third — 81 + 9 + 1 = 91, not 84. Try a² + a. First — 20, no. Try a² + (a + 1). First — 16 + 5 = 21, good. Third — 81 + 10 = 91, no. Try a × (a + 1) + 1. First — 4 × 5 + 1 = 21, good. Third — 9 × 10 + 1 = 91, no. Try a × (a + 1) − 6. First — 20 − 6 = 14, no. So return to the small rule a × 5 + 1 — it fits pairs one and two but not three. That is the signal to look for a relation that uses the position of the pair.

Try b = a² + a × m, with m shifting. First — 16 + 4m = 21, so m = 1.25. That is rare; reject. The cleanest fit is b = a × (a + 1) + 1 on pair one but a × (a + 1) − 6 on pair three — meaning the stem is broken, which is the cue to pick the option that fits the simpler rule shared by pairs one and two. In a real exam, treat a stem like this as a signal to choose the option that is consistent with the cleanest two-pair rule and move on. Spending more than ninety seconds on a single analogy is a loss-making trade.

Combined word-plus-number analogies

A small share of analogy items pair a word with a number — a planet with its order from the sun, a metal with its atomic number, a sport with team size, a year with an event. The method is the same: name the link, check direction, apply to the target. Test only the link the stem actually supports.

Examples of likely links you should recognise on sight — basketball with five (team size on court), cricket with eleven, hockey with eleven, kabaddi with seven, water polo with seven. Planet order — Mercury with one, Venus with two, Earth with three, Mars with four. Independence years — India with 1947, Pakistan with 1947, Bangladesh with 1971, Sri Lanka with 1948.

If the stem pairs a country with a year and the year is not an independence year, do not invent a link. Sometimes the link is a hosting year (Olympics, Commonwealth Games, Asian Games). The trap option is the year that fits a different but plausible event.

Trap patterns to recognise

Five distractor families recur across AFCAT analogy items. Recognising the family kills the trap before it kills the mark.

• Opposite-direction option. The relation runs a to b; the option runs b to a. Example — if the stem is square root, the trap is the square. Always restate the direction.
• Generic-relation distractor. The option shares a theme with the stem but a different specific link. Example — for an animal-and-young stem, the trap option may be the animal-and-sound or animal-and-habitat.
• Same-category distractor. The option is in the same category as the answer (both vehicles, both metals, both birds) but fails the actual link. Example — if the link is the bird that cannot fly, the trap is another bird that can fly.
• Near-square or near-cube number. The option is a recognisable square or cube that is one or two away from the correct number. Example — 144 listed when 145 is the answer to a² + 1.
• Off-by-one factorial or prime. The option is the next factorial or next prime. Example — 5 (third prime) when the answer should be 7 (fourth prime).

The best defence is to predict the answer before you look at the options. The pre-formed prediction is what catches a near-trap before it tempts you.

Commonly confused relation pairs

Some relation families look similar enough that they fool a quick eye. The table calls out the differences.

Time budget on AFCAT day

Two and a half analogy questions per paper deserve no more than two and a half minutes of total ink. That works out to a tight per-question budget.

• Verbal analogy: 20–35 seconds. Name the relation in two seconds, predict the answer in five, match an option in three, scan for trap in five, mark and move.
• Numeric analogy: 45–60 seconds. Test add/subtract first, then multiply/divide, then square/cube, then square-plus-constant, then multiply-then-add. If none of the five families fits in forty-five seconds, mark the best fit and move on.
• Three-pair stem: Add ten seconds for the cross-check on the third pair. Do not skip the cross-check, even under time pressure.
• Hybrid word-plus-number: 25–40 seconds. Test the team-size, planet-order, year-of-event links in order.

Build the budget into the mock-test routine. After ten timed mocks the wrist learns the budget on its own — by exam day, the eye refuses to linger longer than the allotted seconds.

Worked AFCAT-style examples

Exam-day strategy

1. Name the relation in one short phrase before the eye reaches the options.
2. Check the direction of the relation by restating it in a sentence — operator drives vehicle, not vehicle drives operator.
3. Predict the answer before scanning options; a pre-formed prediction beats a fitted answer every time.
4. For numeric items, test rules in the order add, subtract, multiply, divide, square, cube, square-plus-constant, multiply-then-add.
5. When two options look right, refine the relation by adding a property — narrow it until only one survives.
6. On three-pair stems, always confirm the rule on the second worked pair before applying it to the missing term.
7. Reject options where the relation runs in the opposite direction even if the option is in the right category.
8. Time-box every numeric analogy to ninety seconds; mark the best fit and move on if the rule has not surfaced.

Frequently asked questions

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