✓ Question 10: the hollow square
Round 2 completed
Up next: round 3, quick reasoning
5 short problems where the first idea isn't always the right one.
Why, for question 10: Which shape comes next?
The answer is the hollow square. The shape follows the cycle circle, triangle and square, and the fill alternates between solid and hollow. In the sixth position, the shape is the square and the figure is hollow.
Two patterns at the same time
This was the hardest question in the round, because two things changed together. The way to handle it is to separate them: first follow only the shape and then only the fill.
The shape repeats a cycle of three, and the fill a cycle of two. Each one on its own is easy to predict; the difficulty lies in looking at both at once.
The two cycles line up again every 6 figures, because 6 is the smallest number that is a multiple of both 2 and 3. So the seventh figure would again be a solid circle, like the first.
Each wrong option had one correct feature and one incorrect one. That is the typical trap of challenges with two patterns: getting half the rule right and choosing too quickly.
