HSPT Practice Questions (2026) — Free Sample Questions with Answers

14 free HSPT questions from our 150-question bank, grouped by content domain. Each answer explains why the right option is right — and why every wrong option is wrong.

Verbal Skills (3)Quantitative Skills (2)Reading (3)Mathematics (3)Language (3)

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Verbal Skills

Question 1

Ignorant is to knowledge as destitute is to

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Answer: B

charity: Charity is what a destitute person may need, not the thing whose lack defines the word.

wealth: Correct. An ignorant person lacks knowledge; a destitute person lacks wealth (money and possessions). Each pair links a "lacking" word to the thing lacked.

poverty: Poverty is the condition of being destitute (a synonym), not the thing that is lacking.

hunger: Hunger can result from being destitute (effect), but destitute means lacking money and possessions.

For "lacking" analogies, the answer is the thing that is missing, not the resulting state.

Question 2

All of the students in the chess club are in eighth grade. Dalia is in eighth grade. If the first two statements are true, the third is

Dalia is in the chess club.

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Answer: C

Draw the chess club as a circle inside the circle of eighth graders.
Dalia is somewhere inside the eighth-grade circle.
She could be inside or outside the chess club circle, so the statement is uncertain.

true: This reverses the first statement. Every chess club member is an eighth grader, but not every eighth grader must be in the club.

false: Nothing says Dalia is outside the club; an eighth grader may or may not be a member.

uncertain: Correct. The chess club is inside the group of eighth graders, but Dalia could be anywhere in that larger group, in or out of the club.

"All A are B" does not mean "all B are A". Draw nested circles to catch this over-inference.

Question 3

Ominous most nearly means

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Answer: D

enormous: A sound-alike trap: ominous and enormous rhyme, but ominous is not about size.

hopeful: Hopeful is nearly the opposite of ominous.

mysterious: Ominous things can seem mysterious, but the word itself means suggesting that something bad will happen.

threatening: Correct. Ominous means suggesting that something bad is coming, as in ominous clouds, so threatening is the synonym.

Ominous comes from omen: a sign of trouble ahead.

Quantitative Skills

Question 4

The three circles are the same size, and each is divided into equal parts. Examine the figures (a), (b), and (c) and select the best answer.

Three equal circles with shaded sectors

Circle (a) has 8 equal parts with 3 shaded. Circle (b) has 3 equal parts with 1 shaded. Circle (c) has 6 equal parts with 2 shaded.

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Answer: C

(a) 3/8 = 9/24.
(b) 1/3 = 8/24.
(c) 2/6 = 1/3 = 8/24.
(a) > (b) = (c).

(b) is more shaded than (a): (b) = 1/3 ≈ 0.33 is less than (a) = 3/8 = 0.375.

(a) is more shaded than (c): Correct. (a) = 3/8 = 0.375 and (c) = 2/6 = 1/3 ≈ 0.333, so (a) is more shaded.

(a), (b), and (c) are equally shaded: True of (b) and (c) only; (a) = 3/8 is slightly more than 1/3.

Compare fractions, not the number of shaded parts; a common denominator (24) settles close cases.

Question 5

Look at this series: 7, 10, 16, 28, ___, 100, … What number should fill the blank?

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Answer: B

Differences: 10 − 7 = 3, 16 − 10 = 6, 28 − 16 = 12.
Each difference doubles, so the next is 24: 28 + 24 = 52.
Check: 52 + 48 = 100. ✓

40: Adds 12 again, repeating the last difference instead of doubling it.

52: Correct. The differences double: 3, 6, 12, 24, 48. So 28 + 24 = 52, and 52 + 48 = 100 checks.

56: Doubles the term (28 × 2) instead of doubling the difference; 56 + 48 would not reach 100 by the rule.

76: Works backward from 100 using the wrong difference (100 − 24); the step into 100 is 48.

For a blank in the middle, find the rule and then check it against the term after the blank.

Reading

Question 6

What does the grandfather mean when he says that fish "care about whether you show up"?

¹The fog had not lifted by the time Hana and her grandfather reached the end of the pier. It hung over the harbor like a gray wool blanket, so thick that the lighthouse on the point was only a pale smudge, blinking every few seconds as if it were trying to stay awake.

²Hana set down the bucket of bait and blew on her fingers. It was the last week of October, and the wooden planks were slick with frost. Somewhere below, the water slapped and sloshed against the pilings, patient and unseen.

³"Fish don't care about the weather," her grandfather said, threading line through his reel with hands that had done the same job for sixty years. "They care about whether you show up."

⁴Hana did not answer. She had wanted to stay in bed, and she still half-wished she had. But she watched him cast, the line arcing out and vanishing into the whiteness, and she picked up her own rod.

⁵For a long time nothing happened. Gulls complained somewhere overhead. A bell buoy clanged once, then again, slow and lonely. The cold crept through Hana's mittens and settled in her knuckles.

⁶Then, just as the sun began to burn a silver hole through the fog, her line jerked so hard that she nearly dropped the rod. She reeled with all her strength, her arms aching, until a flash of green and silver broke the surface.

⁷Her grandfather did not shout or clap. He simply nodded, the way he did when the tide came in on time, and reached for the net. Hana grinned so widely that her cheeks hurt, and for the first time all morning, she did not notice the cold.

Show answer & explanation

Answer: B

Fish are drawn to the sounds people make on a pier.: Takes the words literally; he is making a point about effort, not about fish hearing.

Being there and trying matters more than weather.: Correct. He contrasts the weather with showing up: what matters is coming out and trying, which Hana's catch later proves.

Fish are easier to catch when it is cold and foggy.: He says fish do not care about the weather, so the fog neither helps nor hurts.

Hana should have arrived at the pier much earlier.: Nothing suggests they were late; he is answering Hana's reluctance, not her timing.

A character's saying usually states a lesson; check it against how the story ends.

Question 7

Based on the passage, which event would most likely cause sea level to rise?

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Answer: B

a large sheet of floating sea ice melting in summer: Paragraph 4: floating ice is already displacing its weight of water, so its melting barely changes the level.

a glacier on land calving many icebergs into the sea: Correct. Paragraph 4 says that when a glacier sheds icebergs, water stored on land is added to the ocean, so sea level rises.

seawater freezing into new sea ice during winter: Freezing seawater moves no water from land into the ocean.

an iceberg slowly melting as it drifts at sea: The iceberg is already floating, so like sea ice it displaces its weight of water; the rise happened when it left the land.

Combine paragraphs 3 and 4: what matters is whether water moves from land into the ocean, not whether ice melts.

Question 8

Which of the following would be the best title for this passage?

¹For centuries, a lighthouse was only as useful as the light it could throw across the water. Early towers burned wood or coal in open fires, and later keepers used oil lamps placed in front of curved metal reflectors. Even the best reflectors wasted much of the light, which scattered upward into the sky or was absorbed by the metal. On a hazy night, a ship's crew might not see the warning until the rocks were already close.

²In the early 1820s, a French engineer named Augustin Fresnel proposed a different solution. Instead of reflecting light with metal, he would bend it with glass. A single solid lens large enough to gather a lighthouse lamp's light would have been enormously thick and heavy, and it would probably have cracked from the lamp's heat. Fresnel's design divided the lens into a series of concentric rings of prisms. Each ring was angled to bend the light toward the horizon, so that the rays left the lens in a strong, nearly parallel beam.

³Because the rings did the work of a thick lens with far less glass, the new lens was lighter and thinner, and much less of the light was lost. In 1823, the first Fresnel lens was installed in the Cordouan Lighthouse at the mouth of the Gironde River in France. Its beam reached far beyond the range of the old reflector lights.

⁴Over the following decades, Fresnel lenses were installed in lighthouses around the world. They were built in several sizes, called orders, with the largest reserved for towers on dangerous coasts and the smallest used in harbors and on rivers. Many of these lenses still exist, and visitors who climb a lighthouse tower today may see one, its rings of glass glittering in the sun.

⁵Fresnel died in 1827, only a few years after his invention first shone over the sea. Yet his idea outlived him. The same ringed design appears today in some vehicle lights, in traffic signals, and in the flat plastic magnifiers sold in bookstores. Of all the inventions of the nineteenth century, none was more important to the safety of sailors.

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Answer: A

How a Ringed Lens Changed Lighthouses: Correct. The passage traces the problem with reflectors, Fresnel's ringed lens, and its spread and lasting use: the whole passage is about this lens and lighthouses.

The Lighthouse at Cordouan: Too narrow: Cordouan appears only in paragraph 3 as the first site of the lens.

The Hard Life of Lighthouse Keepers: Keepers are mentioned once in paragraph 1; the passage is about lighting technology, not their lives.

Inventions of the Nineteenth Century: Too broad: the passage covers one invention, mentioning the century only in its final sentence.

The best title covers the whole passage: not one detail (too narrow) and not a general topic (too broad).

Mathematics

Question 9

A standard number cube with faces numbered 1 through 6 is rolled once. What is the probability that the number rolled is even or greater than 4?

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Answer: C

Even: 2, 4, 6. Greater than 4: 5, 6.
Either one (count 6 once): 2, 4, 5, 6 = 4 outcomes.
Probability = 4/6 = 2/3.

$\frac{1}{6}$ : Counts only the outcome that is both even and greater than 4 (6).

$\frac{1}{2}$ : Counts only the even numbers and ignores 5.

$\frac{2}{3}$ : Correct. The outcomes are 2, 4, 5 and 6: 4 of 6 = 2/3.

$\frac{5}{6}$ : Adds 3/6 + 2/6, counting the 6 twice.

For "or," list the outcomes and count any overlap only once.

Question 10

The table shows the tickets sold at the Quarry Hill Theater on three days. Adult tickets cost $8 and student tickets cost $5. How much more money did the theater collect on Saturday than on Thursday?

Quarry Hill Theater ticket sales
Day	Adult tickets	Student tickets
Thursday	45	30
Friday	60	50
Saturday	80	40

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Answer: C

Saturday: 80 × $8 = $640 and 40 × $5 = $200, total $840.
Thursday: 45 × $8 = $360 and 30 × $5 = $150, total $510.
Difference: $840 − $510 = $330.

$225: Prices all 45 extra tickets at the student rate (45 × $5).

$280: Counts only the extra adult tickets (35 × $8) and ignores the student tickets.

$330: Correct. Saturday: 80 × $8 + 40 × $5 = $840; Thursday: 45 × $8 + 30 × $5 = $510; $840 − $510 = $330.

$360: Prices all 45 extra tickets at the adult rate (45 × $8).

Turn each row into dollars before comparing; ticket counts alone hide the different prices.

Question 11

The Ridgeview Drama Club sold 240 tickets to its spring play. Adult tickets cost $5 and student tickets cost $3. Ticket sales totaled $900. How many adult tickets were sold?

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Answer: A

Suppose all 240 tickets were student tickets: 240 × $3 = $720.
Actual sales are $900 − $720 = $180 more.
Each adult ticket adds $5 − $3 = $2, so 180 ÷ 2 = 90 adult tickets.
Check: 90 × $5 + 150 × $3 = $450 + $450 = $900.

90: Correct. If all 240 were student tickets, sales would be $720; the extra $180 ÷ $2 per adult ticket = 90.

120: Assumes half were adult tickets; 120 × $5 + 120 × $3 = $960, not $900.

150: This is the number of student tickets.

180: Stops at the extra $180 without dividing by the $2 price difference.

Two-price problems: price everything at the lower rate, then divide the shortfall by the price difference.

Language

Question 12

Which topic sentence best fits this paragraph?

_____. On Tuesdays, volunteers teach older adults to use e-mail and video calls. On Thursdays, high school students tutor younger children in math. On Saturdays, a local chef leads a cooking class for whole families.

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Answer: A

The Westfield Library has weekly programs for all ages.: Correct. It covers all three details: older adults, children and families, on different days of the week.

Volunteers are the most important part of the Westfield Library.: Only partly fits: the paragraph lists programs, and the chef may not be a volunteer.

The Westfield Library hosts classes taught by local chefs.: Too narrow: it relates only to the Saturday cooking class.

Many older adults want to learn how to use new technology.: Too narrow: it matches only the Tuesday program.

Pick the sentence that sums up all the details, not just one or two of them.

Question 13

Which sentence is expressed most clearly?

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Answer: C

Running down the hallway, the backpack slipped off Nolan's shoulder.: The opening phrase dangles: it says the backpack was running.

Nolan's backpack, while he was running down the hallway, it slipped off.: The extra pronoun "it" repeats the subject and makes the sentence awkward.

As Nolan ran down the hallway, his backpack slipped off his shoulder.: Correct. The clause clearly says who was running, and the main clause says what happened.

Nolan was running in the hallway and while running his backpack slipped.: The repeated "running" is wordy, and the ideas are loosely strung together.

A modifier must sit next to the word it describes; check who is doing the action.

Question 14

These sentences are from a letter to a pen pal. Choose the sentence that contains an error in punctuation, capitalization, or usage. If there is no error, choose 'No mistakes.'

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Answer: B

The players on the team practice every afternoon after school.: The subject "players" is plural, so "practice" agrees.

The box of old photographs were stored in the attic for years.: Correct. The subject is "box," not "photographs," so the verb must be singular: was stored.

Neither the teacher nor the students were ready for the fire drill.: With "neither…nor," the verb agrees with the nearer subject, "students," so "were" is correct.

No mistakes.: Sentence B has a subject-verb agreement error.

Cross out the prepositional phrase ("of old photographs") to find the real subject.

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