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Blood relations

Ravi is Meena’s mother’s brother — what is Ravi to Meena? Follow chains of family words, from two steps to as many as you can hold.

  • Logic
  • Untimed
  • Endless levels

How it plays

A family relation is described one step at a time — father, daughter, brother, wife — and you name it in one word: uncle, cousin, sister-in-law, great-grandson.

Walk it from the person it is relative to. A father is one generation up; his brother is an uncle; the uncle’s son is a cousin. Some steps fold back: a son’s sister is also a daughter, a brother’s father is the same father. Brothers and sisters here always share both parents.

Levels lengthen the chain without end; past great-great-, the count is written out, so a 3rd great-grandmother is a great-great-great-grandmother. In the form where everyone is named, the lines can also be shuffled. Every description names exactly one relation — steps that could mean two things, like a grandfather’s son, are never used.

Keys

Space starts and skips ahead · 1–9 pick · Enter submits · Esc stops. On a phone, tap.

What it trains

This practises composing relations step by step, the blood-relation puzzles of aptitude tests. It trains these puzzles; it claims nothing wider.

Learn

How to get better at blood relations: the method, the techniques, what each new level asks of you, and the traps the wrong answers are made of.

Your approach to each question

  1. Find the person everything is relative to — the second name in “What is Ravi to Meena?” — and stand in their place.
  2. Walk the chain one word at a time, outward from them: in “Meena’s mother’s brother”, go to her mother first, then to the mother’s brother.
  3. Keep a running count instead of a picture: generations up, whether you stepped sideways to a brother or sister, and generations down.
  4. Turn the count into one word at the end, and give it the gender of the last word in the chain.

Techniques and tricks

  • Up, across, down

    Father or mother is one up. Brother or sister is one step across. Son or daughter is one down. Most relations are a count of these: up 1 and across is an uncle or aunt; up 1, across, down 1 is a cousin; across then down 1 is a nephew or niece.

    e.g. Dev’s father’s sister’s son: up 1, across, down 1 — Dev’s cousin.

  • Count the greats

    Two up is a grandparent; each generation beyond adds a “great-”. Two down is a grandchild, the same way. Up 1 and across is an uncle; each extra generation up adds a “great-” to it.

    e.g. Asha’s son’s son’s daughter: three down, so great-granddaughter.

  • Steps that fold away

    Some steps add nothing. A brother or sister of your child is your child, and a parent of your brother or sister is your parent: your son’s sister is your daughter, your brother’s father is your father. Cancel those steps before you count.

    e.g. Meena’s brother’s mother is Meena’s mother.

  • Different names, different people

    In the “Everyone named” form, two names are always two people. So a parent’s son with another name is a brother, not you, and a brother’s brother is your brother.

    e.g. Arjun is Meena’s father; Ravi is Arjun’s son. Ravi is Meena’s brother.

  • Where the marriage sits

    A marriage at your end gives the in-laws: wife’s father is father-in-law, husband’s sister is sister-in-law. A marriage at the far end gives a relative’s spouse: son’s wife is daughter-in-law, brother’s wife is sister-in-law, uncle’s wife is aunt.

  • Thread the shuffled lines

    When the lines are shuffled, find the line that starts from the person the question is about, then the line that starts from whoever that one introduced, and so on. You are rebuilding the chain in order before you walk it.

As the levels climb

  • In the one-sentence form, the chain grows a step at a time without end, with the clock closing to 80% and then 65% along the way. However long it gets, keep the count — up, across, down — and not a family tree.
  • In the “Everyone named” form, the chain grows to fifteen steps, as far as the names go. Early in that ladder the lines are shuffled too, so threading them comes before walking them.
  • Past great-great-, the count is written out: a 3rd great-grandmother is five generations up. For a grandparent or grandchild, count the generations and take away two: that is how many greats.
  • With “Time pressure” on, the time is 12 seconds plus 6 for each step, cut by the pace steps. Name the answer from your count before you read the options.

Traps to avoid

  • The relation read backwards: you are asked what Ravi is to Meena, and “nephew” sits beside “uncle”. Always walk from the second name, the one after “to”.
  • One generation out: great-uncle beside uncle, great-granddaughter beside granddaughter. Count the ups and downs on your fingers if you need to; do not judge by how long the chain looks.
  • The wrong gender: aunt for uncle, grandson for granddaughter. The answer takes the gender of the last word only — a mother’s brother is a man whatever came before.
  • The sideways step missed: son offered for nephew, father for uncle, grandson for grandnephew. Note every brother or sister in the chain; one of them turns a straight line into a branch.
  • The marriage dropped: brother offered for brother-in-law. If a husband or wife appears anywhere in the chain, the answer is an in-law, or an aunt or uncle by marriage.

How to practise

  • Start with “Form” on “One sentence” to learn the counting, then switch to “Everyone named, one line each” to add threading and the name rule.
  • Raise “Options shown” towards 8: more of the near misses — the backwards, the one-out and the wrong-gender words — appear together, so a rough count stops being enough.
  • After a miss, read the working step by step. It names the relation after every word, so you can see which step you counted wrongly.

Levels

It is untimed unless you turn the clock on. There is no last level: at least one dial turns without end. Your level is judged on your last ten answers, every ten: 90% moves you up, below 80% moves you down, which holds most people near four in five right.

All of it is in the settings beside Start — how many answers a judgement looks at and how often it recalibrates, the thresholds, the time, which questions, how many options, and whether you see each verdict at once or review them together at the judgement. You can also jump to any level.

More logic

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