Cubiks Assessment Tips

SEO title: Cubiks Assessment Tips: Beat the Section Timers

Meta description: Practical Cubiks (Talogy) tips: how Logiks sub-section timers work, why abstract is the tightest block, and how to pace verbal, numerical and abstract.

Suggested URL: /tests/cubiks-assessment-tips

Quick answer

The single most important thing to understand about a Cubiks assessment is that Logiks General is not one long test with one clock, and it is not three separate tests either. It sits between those. You work through verbal, numerical and abstract reasoning in one sitting, but each of those blocks carries its own short timer, and when a block's timer expires you move on whether you have finished it or not. Time you save in one block does not carry into the next.

That structure is where most preparation goes wrong. Candidates prepare a general pace and then get caught by how short the individual blocks are. On the widely published Logiks General Intermediate configuration — 50 questions in 12 minutes — the abstract block is commonly reported as ten questions in about four minutes, which is roughly 24 seconds per item. On the Advanced version, commonly published as 30 questions in 20 minutes, the split is usually described as around eight minutes each for verbal and numerical and four minutes for abstract. Employers configure what they use and the exact numbers vary, so treat published figures as indicative and read the instruction screens on the day.

You may also see either brand name. Cubiks was acquired by PSI Services and, on 15 March 2022, was brought under the Talogy identity alongside a large group of other assessment businesses. Depending on when your employer set up their process, the invitation, the login page and the test itself may say Cubiks, Talogy, or both. It is the same Logiks and PAPI material either way. The tips below are built around that real structure rather than generic aptitude advice.

Tip 1: Find out which Logiks you have been assigned

Before any practice, work out what is actually coming. Cubiks material is not a single test, and the versions differ enough that preparing for the wrong one wastes most of your effort.

Logiks General comes in an Intermediate and an Advanced form, and they behave differently. Intermediate is commonly published as 50 questions in 12 minutes across the three reasoning types, which makes it a very fast, shallow-per-question test. Advanced is commonly published as 30 questions in 20 minutes, which gives you noticeably more time per item and asks harder questions — the numerical block in particular is often described as around eight questions in eight minutes, roughly a minute each, which is a completely different rhythm from Intermediate.

Separately, Cubiks publishes standalone single-ability Logiks Advanced tests. These are commonly reported as around 36 verbal questions in 25 minutes, 20 numerical questions in 25 minutes, and 30 abstract questions in 15 minutes. If your employer has assigned one of these rather than Logiks General, you are sitting one long focused test rather than three short blocks, and your pacing plan should reflect that.

Your invitation is the authority. It normally names the assessment, gives an expected duration, and states the completion deadline. Where it is vague, the instruction screen before you begin is the real source of truth — and it is worth reading rather than clicking through, because on a four-minute block, thirty seconds of confusion is two questions.

Tip 2: Pace each block separately — you cannot bank time

This is the tip that most distinguishes Cubiks preparation from preparation for a single-timer test.

Because each reasoning block has its own countdown, there is no such thing as getting ahead. Finishing the verbal block with a minute spare does not give you a spare minute for numerical. That minute simply disappears. The practical consequence is that you should work each block at the pace that block requires, rather than trying to build a buffer.

Calculate the budget for each block before you start it, from the numbers on the instruction screen. On a widely published Intermediate configuration you are looking at roughly ten seconds per verbal item, fifteen per numerical item, and around 24 seconds per abstract item. On Advanced the numerical block is far more generous per question but the questions are harder, and abstract stays tight.

Then set a single mid-block checkpoint rather than watching the countdown continuously. Constant clock-checking is itself a cost, and it tends to trigger the rushing that produces careless errors on questions you could have answered.

Have an abandonment rule ready and rehearsed for each block, because the right threshold differs. In a block running at ten seconds per item, hesitating for thirty seconds on one question has cost you three others. In the Advanced numerical block, a minute on a hard item is simply using your allocation. The same instinct produces good and bad outcomes depending on which block you are in, which is why deciding in advance matters.

Tip 3: Treat the abstract block as its own discipline

Across the commonly published Logiks General configurations, abstract reasoning gets the shortest allocation — often around four minutes regardless of whether you are sitting Intermediate or Advanced. Candidates consistently report it as the block that runs away from them.

The material is shape and pattern sequences: a series of figures governed by an underlying rule, where you identify what comes next or which figure breaks the pattern. The rule set is finite and not complicated — rotation, reflection, changes in the number of elements, shading, size, position within the frame, and rules that alternate between successive figures.

What separates candidates here is method rather than intuition. If you look at a sequence and wait for the rule to announce itself, you will solve the easy items and stall completely on the harder ones. If you run a fixed checklist over every item — checking each of those features in turn until something holds across the whole sequence — you resolve items in a fraction of the time.

The alternating-rule case is the one most people miss and the one that unlocks the most items. When one rule governs the odd-numbered figures and a different rule governs the even-numbered ones, the sequence looks incoherent until you separate them, and then it is usually straightforward.

This is also the block where practice produces the most visible improvement, because most adults have not looked at figural reasoning since school. The whole gap is familiarity with the rule set, and a week of short daily sessions closes most of it.

Tip 4: In the numerical block, read the data before you calculate

The numerical questions draw on ordinary business arithmetic — percentages, ratios, proportions, averages, rates of change — applied to short data presentations. The mathematics is not the hard part.

What costs marks is reading. Check the units before anything else: thousands, millions, percentages, index values. Check which column or row corresponds to which period or category. Check whether a footnote adjusts a figure. That orientation is reusable when several questions draw on the same exhibit, so ten seconds spent at the start of a data set often pays for itself two or three times over.

Then read each question to the end before you start working. Solving accurately for the wrong quantity — the change when the total was wanted, one period when an average was asked for — is a very common way to lose a mark while doing the arithmetic perfectly.

Estimate whenever the answer options are widely spread. If the choices differ substantially in magnitude, you need the approximate scale rather than the precise figure, and rounding aggressively gets you there far faster. Save exact calculation for the items where two options sit close together.

On calculator use, check your invitation and instruction screen rather than assuming, since practice varies by administration. Some candidates report having a calculator and rough paper available; others prepare on the basis of mental arithmetic. Whichever applies to you, practise under that condition — arriving expecting a calculator you do not have is a considerable handicap in a block measured in seconds per question.

Tip 5: In the verbal block, answer only from the passage

Verbal items give you a short passage or statement and ask you to judge what follows from it. Depending on the version you may also meet word relationships, analogies and vocabulary items.

For the passage-based questions, nearly every avoidable loss comes from the same habit: bringing in outside knowledge. If you happen to know something about the subject, that knowledge is not evidence. The only question is what this text establishes. A statement that is true in the world but unsupported by the passage does not count as supported.

Where a "cannot say" or "insufficient information" style option exists, candidates avoid it because it feels like refusing to answer, and instead reason to true or false by supplying an assumption the passage never made. The test is mechanical rather than a judgement call: if deciding would require information the text does not contain, that is the answer.

Watch quantifiers and hedges closely — "all", "most", "some", "may", "always", "only". A statement that strengthens what the passage said, turning "some" into "all" or "may" into "will", is unsupported rather than supported, and these distinctions are exactly what the block is built to test.

Read the statement first and then scan the passage for the sentence it depends on. Passages are short and items are usually anchored to specific lines, so targeted scanning beats reading everything thoroughly and then working through the questions — particularly in a block where you may have only ten seconds an item.

Tip 6: Handle PAPI and any situational judgement section differently

If your process includes PAPI, it is not a test you can revise for. PAPI is Cubiks' personality questionnaire, measuring a set of factors broken into need and role scales, and it comes in two forms. The normative version presents a large set of statements you rate on a scale. The ipsative version presents groups of statements and asks which is most like you and which is least — a forced-choice format that many candidates find uncomfortable precisely because every option may feel partly true.

Both are typically untimed, commonly taking somewhere in the region of 25 to 35 minutes. There is no advantage in hurrying, and no advantage in deliberating endlessly either: first responses tend to be the more consistent ones, and over-analysing individual items usually produces a less coherent profile rather than a better one.

Do not try to construct an idealised profile. Forced-choice formats exist partly to make that difficult, and a strained answer set tends to look exactly like one. Answering honestly also spares you a role that would not have suited you.

Where a situational judgement component is included, you will typically either rate the effectiveness of several responses to a workplace scenario or rank them from most to least effective. Read for the underlying principle rather than the surface details — most scenarios turn on raising problems early, checking before assuming, considering the impact on colleagues and customers, and escalating when something exceeds your authority.

How TestSolve can help

TestSolve lets candidates practise realistic question types, see worked explanations, and review their mistakes before a real online assessment. For a Cubiks process the natural approach mirrors the test's own shape: drill Logiks-style verbal, numerical and abstract items separately, under time pressure that matches the block you will actually face, then read the worked explanation for each item rather than only checking whether you were right.

The explanations are what build speed on a test measured in seconds per question. Seeing which figure in an exhibit the question actually depended on, why a statement overstates its passage, or that a shape sequence resolves the moment you separate the odd and even figures gives you the intended route rather than the one you improvised. Reviewing your mistakes across a batch then tells you which block deserves the rest of your preparation — and with Cubiks that is very often the abstract block, because its allocation is the tightest and the rule set is the least familiar.

Frequently asked questions

TestSolve is independent and not affiliated with any test provider or employer named on this page. All product names and trademarks belong to their respective owners.