The sitting
| Items | Set I 12, Set II 36 (literature; Pearson states no count) |
| Time | untimed; forty to sixty minutes, individual or group (Pearson) |
| Layout | 3x3 throughout, missing piece bottom right |
| Options | eight (Carpenter, Just and Shell 1990) |
| Ink | black on white |
| Order | Set I, then Set II, rising in difficulty |
How it starts
Set I first. It is meant as an orientation: twelve items, one of each theme, easy enough that most people get most of them, and the examiner reads the score to decide what comes next. Then Set II, which is where the form does its work. Because Set II is the measure, it has historically been given with a time limit after Set I, to measure the speed of intellectual work as well as its level; Pearson’s current pages say untimed, so ask, and prepare for both.
What the second half feels like
Items late in Set II carry three, four or five rules at once, on separate attributes, and the wrong options each satisfy some of the rules. The work is not spotting a rule; it is keeping the ones you have found while you look for the next, and checking the candidate piece against all of them. The course’s last rule lesson, two rules at once, is built for exactly that.
Sources: Pearson (timing); Carpenter, Just and Shell 1990 (layout, options, rule counts); Yang et al. 2023 (Set I’s use, the historical time limit on Set II). Read 2026-09-21. This is independent practice material. It is not a Pearson product and uses none of Raven's items. Figures come from Pearson's own pages and the primary literature; where only third parties state a figure, the text says so.