Cubiks Logiks Tips: Speed Tests Where Rhythm Beats Precision

Cubiks, now part of Talogy, is best known for the Logiks aptitude tests. Logiks is a speed test, and it is worth being precise about what that means: the sections are short, the items are individually easy, and there are more of them than you can finish. Most candidates do not complete a section, and the test is calibrated on that basis.

What makes Logiks different from SHL and Saville

The reading is gone. Logiks Verbal has no passages, just word relationships. Logiks Numerical has no data tables, just calculation. That sounds easier and is not, because removing the reading removes the part of a conventional aptitude test where you could think while your eyes moved.

It also means preparation does not transfer cleanly. Hours spent on SHL-style table interpretation will not help much with Logiks numerical, because the skill being taxed is mental arithmetic fluency, not data extraction.

Logiks Verbal: vocabulary, not comprehension

Word analogies, synonyms, antonyms, odd-one-out and sentence completion, at a few seconds each. This is the one aptitude section where raw vocabulary breadth genuinely helps, since there is no passage to reason from.

• Name the relationship before reading the options on analogies. The distractors are built for people who match on topic rather than on relation.
• On odd-one-out, check more than one category before committing. Four words will frequently group three ways depending on whether you sort by meaning, by word class or by connotation, and the intended grouping is usually the tightest one.
• Do not stall on an unfamiliar word. At this pace a single unknown item is worth one mark and thirty seconds of staring is worth several.

Logiks Numerical: fluency, not method

Rapid mental arithmetic, number series, percentages and short word problems. Everything is solvable in a few seconds if the arithmetic is automatic and nothing is solvable if it is not. This section rewards drilling more directly than almost anything else in graduate assessment.

• Times tables and simple division to genuine automaticity.
• Percentages by decomposition: 10 percent then 1 percent, so 17 percent of 240 is 24 plus 2.4 times 7.
• Fraction, decimal and percentage equivalents for the common values.
• Number series: check first differences, then ratios, then alternating patterns, in that order.

Logiks Abstract: matrices

Raven-style three-by-three matrices where you pick the shape that completes the pattern. Read rows first, then columns, then diagonals, and stop as soon as one axis gives you a consistent rule.

The recurring rule families are worth knowing by name because recognising one is much faster than deriving it: elements added or subtracted across a row, rotation by a fixed step, alternating shading, a count that increases along one axis, and superimposition where the third cell combines the first two. If you can check those five in order, most matrices fall out quickly.

Pace, and why re-reading is the enemy

In a four-minute section the correct behaviour is a steady rhythm with no second reads. Every re-read is roughly one whole item. Check before you start whether the section lets you navigate backwards; if it does not, a two-pass strategy is not available and hesitating on anything is pure loss.

Employers configure section lengths and difficulty levels, so your invitation may specify something slightly different from the standard build. The pacing logic does not change.

PAPI-N and PAPI-I are not the same questionnaire

Cubiks also publishes the PAPI personality inventories, in two formats that behave differently:

The ipsative format is the one people find uncomfortable, because it repeatedly makes you give up something desirable. That is deliberate: it is what stops a candidate from claiming every positive trait at once. The useful preparation is not practice but decision. Work out in advance which two or three work behaviours you would actually defend in an interview, and answer consistently with those. A profile that matches how you talk about yourself at interview is worth more than one optimised for an imagined ideal.

The Cubiks situational judgement test

You rate how effective each response to a workplace scenario would be, scored against an expert competency key. Those keys are built from a competency framework, and most large employers publish theirs. Reading the employer's stated competencies before you sit an SJT is the highest-return twenty minutes available in the whole process, because it tells you what the key is weighted towards.

You can practise all three Logiks sections and both PAPI formats at the real pace here.