Apply the same row and column rule to the missing cell. Compare each option with the required features.
5 → 6 → 7
1: B 2: B 3: A 4: B
Printed order
▸ Why It Matters This puzzle asks your child to track a number that changes in a regular way — a polygon's number of sides — increasing or decreasing by a fixed amount as you move across the grid. It's essentially a plain number sequence hiding inside a shape puzzle, and recognizing that connection is the real point: the spatial skill of recognizing a hexagon versus a pentagon has to get translated into the arithmetic skill of recognizing 6, 5, 4 as a countdown. This bridge between "what shape is this" and "what number is this" is exactly the kind of thinking children rely on later, when a science graph's axis turns out to really just be a shape standing in for a quantity, or when a geometry problem asks them to reason about a figure using its numeric properties rather than its appearance alone. ▸ Getting Started Before your child even compares the shapes to each other, have them count the sides of every shape in one row out loud as plain numbers — "three, four, five" — rather than naming the shapes ("triangle, square, pentagon"). Writing those three numbers down in order turns a visual puzzle into a number sequence your child has almost certainly seen before, and once the numeric pattern is obvious, translating the next number back into "how many sides that shape needs" is the easy half of the job. ▸ If They Get Stuck When a shape has enough sides that counting by eye gets unreliable, have your child trace around the outline with a finger and place a small pencil dot at every corner as they go, then count the dots instead of the sides directly. Physically marking each corner turns a shape that's easy to miscount into a tally that's easy to check, and it's a strategy that keeps working even as the polygons get more complex later in the set. ▸ Praise Points Praise your child specifically for treating the shapes as numbers rather than just as pictures: "You counted the sides and turned this whole puzzle into 3, 4, 5 — that's the exact same skill you use on regular number sequences, it's just wearing a shape costume this time." Naming that connection out loud helps the skill transfer to other places where numbers hide inside pictures.
Connects spatial and arithmetic reasoning by having children count a polygon's sides and treat that count as a plain number sequence increasing or decreasing across the grid.
Once translating shapes into numbers feels natural, move on to Matrix Reasoning 14 (Pie Wedge Fractions), which adds proportional and fraction reasoning to the same numeric-pattern skill.