The Item Format and Official Rules

What a pattern folding item looks like

Every pattern folding item has the same anatomy: one flat pattern drawn at the left, and four folded figures at the right, labeled A through D. You decide which of those four solids the pattern folds into.

A complete pattern folding item from the practice generator: the flat pattern at the left, four candidate solids labeled A–D at the right.

The options are plain line drawings, and each one is drawn at whatever orientation suits it. They do not share a camera angle, and the correct figure gets no privileged viewpoint — an option that looks unfamiliar may simply be resting on a different face than the option beside it.

The official rules

The directions for this section are short. A flat pattern is presented; it is to be folded into a three-dimensional figure; the correct figure is one of the four given at the right; and there is only one correct figure in each set. Then comes the sentence that does the real work: the outside of the pattern is what is seen at the left.

That is a rule about where the ink goes. The printed surface you are looking at becomes the outer skin of the finished solid, so every shaded square, band, triangle and pip on the pattern ends up on an outer face of the correct figure. Nothing printed on the pattern is folded away inside it.

The pattern

Folded

The printed side is the outside. The black square, the shaded triangle and the stippled square all land on outer faces of the folded cube.

The practice prompts in this course state the same convention as an instruction: they ask which solid results when the pattern is folded into the page. Read that as a description of how these items work — the direct consequence of the printed side being the outside — rather than as a separate published rule. Why that one convention settles which solid you get is the next topic.

Position and orientation both count

A marking must land on the right face and sit the right way round on it. Matching the number of shaded faces proves nothing: an option can shade exactly as many faces as the pattern does and still be wrong, because those shades sit in the wrong places relative to each other. An option can also put a mark on the correct face and then turn it, so a shaded triangle points at a different corner than the pattern draws it. Both failures break the same requirement — position and orientation, not count.

Exactly one figure is correct

One of the four figures folds from the pattern and the other three do not. They are not filler. Each wrong figure is a solid that is nearly right, and it takes a definite check — not an impression — to convict it. Here is the item from the top of this page with its answer marked.

D ✓

The same item with its answer marked: exactly one of the four figures is foldable from that pattern.

Where the section sits

Pattern folding is questions 76 through 90 of the Perceptual Ability Test: fifteen items. Each offers four options, where three of the six PAT sections — keyholes, hole punching and cube counting — offer five. You can generate unlimited items like the one above in the pattern folding practice generator.

The takeaway

One flat pattern, four folded figures A through D, exactly one of them foldable from that pattern. The printed side of the pattern becomes the outside of the solid, so every mark on the pattern belongs on an outer face — in the right place and turned the right way. Count is never the test; position and orientation are.

Summary