On the 19th day of Better Tuition’s winter activity advent calendar, we have a fun Verbal Reasoning challenge.

Verbal Reasoning can really help attune the brain to paying attention to detail.  In particular you will want to hone your verbal reasoning skills if you are preparing for grammar school entrance exams. You can scroll down to the very end of this post for the answers but please do not peek! You can also download a pdf of this activity.

Instructions:

In the following passage (including the title), you must find the 17 words hidden at the end of one word and the start of the next.  All the hidden words are exactly four letters long.

For example: I wish it was Christmas all the year round!  (The hidden word is they).

Underline the words on the text.

When Christmas came early

In the year 2013 there was a huge fire at the factory that made all the calendars and all the calendars in the world were burnt to ash and cinders.  Nobody knew if it was halfway through June or December!  The people of the region decided to have Christmas in summer, Passover in autumn and the summer holidays whenever it rained.  Then they added some extra special holidays which made a special festival every single week.
After a few months numerous kids began to feel fed up.  They were sick of chocolate and opening presents didn’t feel special any more.  They even missed school (it was never open any more!).  A vote was taken and it was promptly decided that Christmas, Easter and Eid should come once per year.  The children were glad to get back to school and the adults were glad to return to work.

Scroll down for solution.

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Solution

The hidden words were:

scam; they; deal; sand; hand; snob; wash; here; rasp; vale; skid; dope; rope; wasp; seas; head; tore.

Here’s how they looked in the text:

The Year that Christmas came early

In the year 2013 there was a huge fire at the factory that made all the calendars and all the calendars in the world were burnt to ash and cinders. Nobody knew if it was halfway through June or December! The people of the region decided to have Christmas in summer, Passover in Autumn and the summer holidays whenever it rained. Then they added some extra special holidays which made a special festival every single week. After a few months numerous kids began to feel fed up. They were sick of chocolate and opening presents didn’t feel special any more. They even missed school (it was never open any more!). A vote was taken and it was promptly decided that Christmas, Easter and Eid should come once per year. The children were glad to get back to school and the adults were glad to return to work.