Ways to solve coding Decoding Questions

Solving Coding-Decoding Questions  Smartly

Let’s first understand what coding and decoding is? What types of questions are asked from this topic?
What is ‘Coding-Decoding’?
Coding may be a way of transmitting data between the sender and therefore the receiver in an encrypted manner i.e. without any other person knowing about it.
Before transmission, the info is encoded and when it's received, it's decoded so as to get the first data. This prevents the info from getting corrupt and leaked.
After knowing what coding and decoding are, let us now see how to solve the coding and Decoding questions.

The relevance of ‘Coding-Decoding’ in Reasoning section?
‘Coding and Decoding’ carries significant weightage in various exams, not only this these questions are asked in various recruitment exams. The concept and approach remain the same , only the extent of difficulty varies.
In some exams, the level of difficulty in easy to moderate while in other exams, the level of difficulty is high

Classification of ‘Coding and Decoding’ questions is as follows:

Letter Coding
Substitution
Mixed Letter Coding
Mixed Number Coding

Furthermore, let’s go on a fruitful journey to know smart ways to solve ‘Coding-Decoding’ questions.
Smart approach to solving ‘Coding-Decoding’ questions remains the same and has the following steps:

1. Observe alphabets or numbers given in the question
2. Try to find the pattern or sequence it follows. They could be in ascending or descending order, arranged in an alternate fashion and other ways also .
3. Figure out the rule followed by the given arrangement of alphabets/numbers/words

Basic points you need to remember before solving any question of this topic.

1. Alphabets’ positions (A=1, B=2,……,Y=25, Z=26)
2. Opposite position of alphabet (A=26, B=25,……, Z=1)
3. Opposite of every alphabet (A is opposite to Z, B is opposite to Y then on)

Letter coding:

In this sort of questions, the alphabets in a word are replaced by other alphabets according to a specific rule.
For example: during a certain code, “PARKING” is written as “RYTIKLI”. How will FLOWERS be written in that code?
Explanation: Find out the pattern by comparing the 1st letter of PARKING with the 1st letter of RYTIKLI.
We observe that P is converted to R. R is two positions after P.
Now A is converted to Y. So, we will conclude that A is 2 positions before Y.
So, PARKING is coded as +2 and -2 alphabets in an alternate manner.
Using the same logic, we can decode flowers
F – (+2) – H
L – (-2) – J, as so on
The correct answer is ‘HJQUHPQ’.

SUBSTITUTION:
In such questions, names/words are substituted with different names/words. We have to carefully trace the substitution to reach the right answer.
For example : If ‘Parrot’ is called  ‘Peacock’, ‘Peacock’ is called ‘Swallow’, ‘Swallow’ is called pigeon’, ‘Pigeon’ is called ‘Sparrow’, what would be the name of the national bird?
Explanation: We know ‘peacock’ is the national bird. But within the given question, ‘Peacock’ is coded as ‘Swallow’. So ‘Swallow’ is the correct answer.

MIXED LETTER CODING:
In this type of question, three-four phrases are given in coded language and the code for a particular word is asked.
To solve such questions, any two phrases with a standard word are picked up. The common code word will ask that word. Proceeding during a similar manner, all possible combinations of two phrases are selected and a standard code is picked up.
Let us solve a question:
In a certain code language,
‘new banking system’means ‘ss tp na’
‘officer in uniform’means ‘or mu at’
‘new bank officer’means ‘or bk na’
‘systems in bank’means ‘bk at ss’
What is the code for ‘in’?
Explanation: In statements (2) and (4), the common code word is ‘in’ and therefore the common code is ‘at’.
What does the code ‘bk’ stands for?
Explanation: In statements (3) and (4), the common code word is ‘bk’ and therefore the common word for that's ‘bank’.

MIXED NUMBER CODING:
In this type of questions, numbers are given like phrases. Following an equivalent rule as within the above case, we will easily determine the solution . Selecting two phrases at a time, you've got to seek out the amount code for every word then reach the right answer.
Lets take an example
In a certain code,
‘467’ means ‘leaves are green’,
‘485’ means ‘green is good’
‘639’ means ‘they are paying’.
What is the number code for ‘leaves’?
Explanation: In statements 1 and three , the common word is ‘green’ and therefore the common number is ‘4’. So, ‘4’ is for ‘green’. Now, in statements 1 and a couple of , ‘are’ is common and ‘6’is common. So, ‘6’ stands for ‘are’.
In statement 1, only ‘leaves’ and ‘7’ are remaining, therefore ‘leaves’ corresponds to ‘7’.

Hope this has helped. Find 25 pages of resources with the answers on https://www.teacherspayteachers.com/Store/Moms-Stem-Corner 

A sample worksheet is given here