Here’s a sample practice question and solution for verbal reasoning.

Rearrange the words to make the longest sentence that you can. Write down the remaining word was not used in your sentence.

To a of keelhauled change was be but The delinquent captain had pressure the heart

So how do we deal with this?  Follow a similar approach as I did with the another word rearrangement type verbal reasoning question.

1) Look at the words to get an overall feel of what the sentence could be about.

The word captain remains me of a ship and that’s about it.  The word delinquent is there so that captain could be delinquent.  But delinquent is also a noun and can be used separately.

2) Let’s group words together.

The captain (we’ll leave delinquent out for now), had a change of heart, captain was pressured, the delinquent was to be keelhauled (keelhauled is a type of punishment that was done on ships in the olden days).

3) What makes sense?  Let’s put some thing together - it’s like playing with building blocks until with get something that fits.

The delinquent was to be keelhauled but the Captain had a change of heart.

Let’s see if this works and uses up all the words except for one.

To a of keelhauled change was be but The delinquent captain had pressure the heart

Yes! It works and the remaining word is “pressure”.

Other things that could have come from looking at the words is this sentence:

The Captain was under pressure as the delinquent was to be keelhauled.

But…. the missing word ‘under’ was a clear signal that the word ‘pressure’ wasn’t going to be in this sentence. 

This is tricky because pressure is a word that we associate with the heart - “blood pressure”.

So that’s that solution to this question.

To a of keelhauled change was be but The delinquent captain had pressure the heart –> The delinquent was to be keelhauled by the captain had a change of heart.  Remaining word: pressure.

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