What Is on the TSA CBT Now: The TSO Assessment Battery, Section by Section
What is on the TSA CBT now: connect the dots, image matching and 2D to 3D, how to approach each, the six-month fail rule and what became of the X-ray test.
Search for the TSA CBT and most of what you find describes an X-ray image test and an English test. Applicants stopped reporting either in early 2023. The test Transportation Security Officer applicants sit now is the TSO Assessment Battery, three short timed sections with no X-ray images in them, and TSA publishes almost nothing about it. This guide pieces it together from the official announcements and from candidates who have sat it since 2022, section by section, with what to do in each.
Why the announcement still says x-ray
Every TSO announcement on USAJOBS says you “may be invited to take the TSO Assessment Battery (TAB) (i.e., a computer based test) to evaluate x-ray interpretation aptitude”, and the confirmation email, as candidates quote it, says the test “will consist of assessments that evaluate your x-ray interpretation aptitude”. Read literally, that sounds like bag images. It is not. TSA’s own careers page now says “image interpretation aptitude”, and the candidates who have sat the test since October 2022 describe the same three sections: connect the dots, image matching and 2D to 3D.
The official wording caught up in two steps. The sentence about confirming “English language proficiency” left the announcements after March 2023, and the name TSO Assessment Battery appears on every TSO announcement sampled since 7 January 2025. On 8 October 2026, all 171 open TSO announcements carried it.
TSA publishes no item counts, clocks or scoring for any section, so everything below about the sections comes from candidate reports. They agree on the shape and differ on the numbers. Most put the sections in the order below, and one candidate describes worked examples before the scored items in each.
1. Connect the dots
Circles labelled with numbers or letters are scattered across the screen, and you click them in order as fast as you can. There are three trails: numbers, then letters, then numbers and letters alternating, 1, A, 2, B, 3, C. The most recent detailed report gives 1 to 15, A to M and about 20 alternating circles; a 2023 report had the letters running to Z. No clock is reported, and nobody has said what a wrong click does. It is a speed test, and it is the paradigm psychologists call trail making.
Two habits make the difference. Look for the next circle while your pointer is still travelling to the current one, one circle ahead rather than three. And on the alternating trail, say the pair under your breath, “6, F, 7, G”, because the switch between numbers and letters is where people stall.
2. Image matching
A target picture sits at the top with five options below it, four very similar and one identical. Candidates mention everyday drawings such as a house and a clown. Click the identical one and the next item appears straight away, and you answer as many as you can in a fixed window: two candidates report three minutes, and one recent report says five. Whether wrong answers cost anything here is not reported. One prep site says the matching picture can be rotated or resized, but candidates describe it as identical.
The fast method is comparison by parts. Pick one feature of the target, such as the door, and check it across all five options, ruling out each option the moment it differs. Then the next feature. Scanning each option as a whole picture is slower and misses the small differences the wrong options are built on.
3. 2D to 3D
This is the section candidates talk about most, and the one many run out of time on. You see a flat pattern with dotted fold lines and five numbered edges, and beside it the solid it folds into, with more lettered edges than there are numbers. For each number, you choose the letter of the edge it becomes. An X marks the same face on both drawings. Two numbers can share a letter, where their edges meet each other in the fold: one candidate remembers “edge 3 and edge 6 were both A”.
Candidates report 15 minutes for the section and between five and eight drawings, with five answers each and no going back to an earlier drawing. Several describe reaching 60 to 83 percent of it before time ran out. On scoring, three candidates recall wrong answers counting against them: one quotes the on-screen instructions as saying a skipped answer is not penalised, and another says each wrong answer takes off a fraction of a mark rather than a whole one. One candidate recalls no penalty at all. TSA has published neither version.
The format matches a classic paper-folding task, the Surface Development test in a 1976 kit of cognitive tests published by ETS, whose answer key also repeats letters within an item. That is an observation about the kind of task, not a claim about where TSA’s items came from. It does mean the skill is a well-studied one, and it improves with practice.
Booking, results and the six-month rule
You apply on USAJOBS and answer the application questionnaire, which has a cut score of its own. If you pass, an email from OPM’s staffing office tells you how to use the USA Hire system, which sends you to a Pearson VUE page titled “TSA - USA Hire” to book. You must schedule and complete the test at a TSA Testing Center within 21 days, and missing the deadline closes your application.
Results come by email as pass or fail, anywhere from minutes later to about a week. The announcement explains what happens next: “Passing assessment results will be kept on record for two years and failed assessment results will be kept on record for six months.” Those results are used for future applications that need the same assessment, so a fail counts against every TSO application you make for six months, and a pass carries for two years. TSA does not publish a cut score, and does not say how the three sections combine.
What happened to the X-ray and English test
Before late 2022 the TSA CBT had an X-ray section, which prep sites describe as bag images where you decide whether a named item is inside, and an English section. Prep sites still sell practice for both, and some still say the old test runs at select airports, without naming one. No firsthand report of either section since early 2023 appeared among the several hundred candidate posts our research read. One applicant in August 2026 summed it up: “No x-ray portion. It’s different now.” Our TSA CBT hub shows what the old images were described as looking like, with illustrations that are generated, not real scans.
One more name to ignore: some prep copy expands TAB as “Technical Aptitude Battery”. TSA’s name is TSO Assessment Battery.
Practising the TAB
Our TSA CBT practice runs connect the dots, image matching and 2D to 3D on the counts and clocks candidates report, with freshly generated pictures and drawings each time, plus a full sitting of all three in order. The scoring rules are ours, because TSA publishes none, and every game says so. Connect the dots is free to try.