Unit 2 · Schedule and Timetable Matching
Zoe's After-School Schedule — Find the Free Slot
Lesson 1 of 12
Schedule and Timetable Matching questions are a staple of OC Thinking Skills — and they are highly systematic once you know the pattern. Let's begin with the most common variant: given a person's likes and dislikes, find the one day when they won't show up.
This exact format appears in most OC Thinking Skills tests and is frequently placed early in the paper. It rewards students who are thorough rather than quick — missing a single cell in the table is all it takes to get it wrong.
The examiner is checking whether you can cross-reference a table of options against a set of personal preferences and correctly identify the day where no liked option appears — not just reduce the number of options, but find the one day with zero qualifying choices.
A character will only attend an activity on days when at least one item they enjoy is available. You're given a lookup table of items and their days, told what the person dislikes, and asked which day they skip entirely.
Best approach: Start by marking what the person LIKES — it's usually faster to identify the small dislike list and mentally exclude those. Then scan each day in the table: the moment you find at least one liked item, that day is "safe". The one day with zero liked items is your answer.
Question
After school, Zoe will only attend book club on a day when at least one genre she enjoys is featured. She dislikes science fiction and mystery.
| genre | days featured |
|---|---|
| history | Thursday, Friday |
| science fiction | Monday, Tuesday, Thursday |
| mystery | Tuesday, Wednesday, Friday |
| adventure | Monday, Wednesday, Saturday |
On which weekday will Zoe not attend book club?
Select an answer to see the explanation.
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