Idea on Coding and Decoding Questions

The coding and decoding questions are among the most basic questions asked in aptitude-based exams. The topic falls under the category of reasoning ability syllabus. This type of question can be easily understood with its name; therefore, coding and decoding.

The question includes a code and its decoded form. A student needs to understand these relations, which are used to convert the code into the decoded form, and then find the decoded form of another code or vice versa.

Types of Coding and Decoding Questions

There are numerous sorts of coding and decoding questions. These are some examples:

• Alphabet Coding
• Values Coding
• Substitution Coding
• Decipher Coding
• Numerical Coding
• Symbol Based Coding
• Alphabet-Symbol-Numerical Coding

Coding and decoding Questions

There is no specific method or technique to solve questions related to coding and decoding. The reason is that every question needs to be solved with a different approach. Such approaches are developed with time and practice.

Let’s look at a few of the questions and see how to approach a question related to coding and decoding.

Example 1: ‘SUCCESS’ can be coded as ‘QSAACQQ’. Then the term CORRESPONDING can be coded as?

As given in the question, the term ‘SUCCESS’ is coded as ‘QSAACQQ’. This can be represented as,

S (-2)Q

U (-2)S

C (-2)A

C (-2)A

E (-2)C

S (-2)Q

S (-2)Q

As we can observe that the letters are moved back by two letters. Therefore, the code CORRESPONDING can be written as,

C(-2)A

O(-2)M

R(-2)P

R(-2)P

E(-2)C

S(-2)Q

P(-2)N

O(-2)M

N(-2)L

D(-2)B

I(-2)G

N(-2)L

G (-2)E

Thus, the code for ‘CORRESPONDING’ can be written as ‘PCQNMLBGLE’.

The above type of question can be solved by making a table, as shown below.

The table helps in knowing the difference between the code and the decoded letters. Thus, making it easier and faster to decode the letters.

Example 2: The lines and their coded form are given below, observe the process, and convert a sentence given below.

The tree needs water.    #2E  $U1  &M1

Human waste water.     4*A  %M0  &M1

Waste water recycle.     %M0  &M1  7R$

Humans need trees.     4*A  $U1  #2E

What is the code for ‘Human recycle Waste water’?

To solve such problems, we need to decode each word and then verify those words with the second sentence containing the same word.

1. We can see that water is the most common word repeated in the first three of the sentences. Therefore, we need to find the code repeated in these three sentences, which is ‘&M1’.
2. Now the second and the fourth sentence both contain the word Human; therefore, the common code between the two is ‘4*A’, which stands for Human.
3. The second and the third sentence contains the word waste, and the common code between the two is ‘%M0’. Therefore, waste is represented by ‘%M0’.
4. In the third sentence, there are three words, ‘Waste water recycle’ since water is represented by ‘&M1’ and waste is represented by ‘%M0’. Then, the word recycle will be represented by ‘7R$’.

Combining all the words,

Human recycled Wastewater will be coded as 4*A 7R$ %M0 &M1.

Coding and Decoding Tricks

The coding-decoding question with options can be solved with much ease using the option elimination method, and it is a much more time-saving method. This is because you don’t have to understand how to code each of the words. The trick is to convert a word and look for the options in which the codeword is mentioned, and the rest of the options will be eliminated. This is the most convenient method and easy to do with practice. 

Conclusion

The Coding and Decoding question includes a code and its decoded form. A student needs to understand these relations, which are used to convert the code into the decoded form, and then find the decoded form of another code or vice versa. This question can not be solved with any specific method because every question may have a different approach.