Book is to Reading as Fork is to …
Three of these four options have a genuine connection to a fork. Only one of them has the same connection that reading has to a book, and that difference is the entire question.
What verbal analogies measure
A book is the instrument you use for reading, so a fork is the instrument you use for eating. Kitchen and dinner are both associated with forks, which is why they earn partial credit, but association is not the relationship the question is testing.
That distinction is the whole item. Analogies measure whether you can identify the specific relationship between two things and then transfer it, rather than reaching for whatever feels connected. Most wrong answers here are things that are genuinely related, just related differently.
Verbal reasoning correlates strongly with vocabulary, and vocabulary is one of the parts of measured intelligence that keeps improving well into later life. It is also the part most directly under your control.
How to build stronger verbal reasoning
Vocabulary is the component of measured intelligence that keeps growing for decades, and it grows through exposure rather than through drills. That makes it the most improvable thing on this test.
Reading widely does most of the work, and it does it slowly and reliably. What speeds it up is reading material slightly above your comfort level in a field you do not already know, because that is where you meet words you have to work out from context.
Studying vocabulary in isolation is much less effective than meeting words in use. A word learned from a definition tends to stay a definition. A word met three times in three different sentences becomes usable.
- State the relationship out loud before choosing: A is the X used for Y
- Test your candidate answer by putting it back into the same sentence
- Be suspicious of options that are merely nearby in meaning
- Read outside your field, where the vocabulary is unfamiliar on purpose
Structured study is the fastest version of reading outside your field, provided you finish what you start. Our guide on how to choose an online course you will actually finish covers why most people abandon them and what to check before committing. It opens in a new tab.
Question four moves to formal logic, which is the part people find either obvious or maddening.