Understanding Coding Patterns in Reasoning Questions

Coding and decoding questions often appear in reasoning sections of competitive exams. These questions test your ability to identify a hidden pattern or rule used to convert one word or set of letters into another. Once the pattern is identified, you apply it to a new word to find its coded form.

Analyzing the Given Coding Example: LOVE to OLEV

We are given that in a certain code, the word LOVE is written as OLEV. Let's look at the positions of the letters in the original word and the coded word.

Now, let's see where each letter from the original word LOVE moves in the coded word OLEV.

• The letter 'L' which was at position 1 in LOVE, is at position 2 in OLEV.
• The letter 'O' which was at position 2 in LOVE, is at position 1 in OLEV.
• The letter 'V' which was at position 3 in LOVE, is at position 4 in OLEV.
• The letter 'E' which was at position 4 in LOVE, is at position 3 in OLEV.

So, the pattern is a rearrangement of letters based on their original positions. We can describe this position change rule:

Original Position 1 → New Position 2

Original Position 2 → New Position 1

Original Position 3 → New Position 4

Original Position 4 → New Position 3

This can be represented as a mapping of original positions to new positions: 1 → 2, 2 → 1, 3 → 4, 4 → 3.

Applying the Pattern to Decode IRIS

Now, we apply the same position change pattern to the word IRIS. The word IRIS also has four letters. Let's assign positions to its letters:

Using the pattern identified (Original Position 1 → New Position 2, Original Position 2 → New Position 1, Original Position 3 → New Position 4, Original Position 4 → New Position 3), let's find the letter for each new position in the coded word for IRIS:

• New Position 1 gets the letter from Original Position 2 of IRIS, which is 'R'.
• New Position 2 gets the letter from Original Position 1 of IRIS, which is 'I'.
• New Position 3 gets the letter from Original Position 4 of IRIS, which is 'S'.
• New Position 4 gets the letter from Original Position 3 of IRIS, which is 'I'.

Putting the letters in their new positions (1, 2, 3, 4), we get the coded word:

Position 1: R

Position 2: I

Position 3: S

Position 4: I

The coded word for IRIS is RISI.

Conclusion

By analyzing the coding pattern where LOVE becomes OLEV (a specific rearrangement of letters based on original positions), we applied the same rule to IRIS to find its coded form. The coded word for IRIS is RISI.

Revision Table: Coding Pattern Summary

Additional Information: Types of Letter Coding

Coding-decoding questions can involve various types of patterns, not just position changes. Some common types include:

• Letter Shifting: Each letter is shifted forward or backward by a certain number of positions in the alphabet (e.g., A+1=B, A+2=C). The shift might be constant or vary based on position.
• Direct Letter Substitution: Each letter in the original word is replaced by a specific letter. This might be a fixed code for each letter.
• Mixed Shifting & Substitution: A combination of shifting letters and substituting others based on specific rules.
• Reverse Order: The letters of the word are simply written in reverse order.
• Jumbling/Rearrangement: The letters of the word are rearranged according to a specific pattern, as seen in the LOVE-OLEV example.
• Based on Alphabetical Position/Numerical Value: Letters are coded based on their position number in the alphabet (A=1, B=2, etc.), and calculations are performed on these numbers.

Identifying the correct type of pattern and the specific rule is key to solving these coding pattern reasoning problems.