Days, dates and time problems appear in almost every GL-style verbal-reasoning paper, and they are the questions where a calm, fixed method beats raw cleverness every time. These are short logic puzzles built on the calendar and the clock: how many days until an event, which weekday a date falls on, how long between two times, or how a date shifts when you add weeks. Like every VR type, they stop feeling hard the moment your child stops improvising and follows the same reliable steps. This guide gives you that method, a worked example, the classic traps, and where to practise for free.
What the question actually asks
Days, dates and time problems are one of the reasoning families GL Assessment can include in a verbal-reasoning paper. GL never tells you in advance which types appear, so you prepare for all of them; a typical paper might contain three to five calendar-and-clock questions, each worth the same single mark as any synonym or letter-code question. That marking matters. Because every question carries equal weight and feeds into the same standardised age score, a fast, dependable method on this type is high-value preparation, not a niche extra. The questions usually fall into three shapes:
- Weekday problems: "If the 5th is a Thursday, what day is the 26th?"
- Elapsed-time problems: "A film starts at 19:45 and lasts 135 minutes. When does it end?"
- Interval problems: "How many days are there from 28 March to 4 April inclusive?"
The method: anchor, then count
The single most useful habit is to write something down rather than counting in your head. Under time pressure, mental counting is where marks leak. Use one of two anchors depending on the question:
- For weekday and date questions, count in sevens. The same weekday repeats every 7 days, so from any known day you can jump +7, +14, +21 to land on the same weekday instantly. Then step forward or back the small remainder one day at a time.
- For clock and duration questions, convert everything to a single unit first. Turn hours into minutes past a fixed hour, or work in 24-hour time throughout. Add or subtract, then convert back. Mixing 12-hour and 24-hour formats mid-question is the commonest cause of a wrong answer here.
Encourage your child to sketch a quick number line or a five-cell mini-calendar in the margin. It takes six seconds and removes almost all the risk of an off-by-one slip.
A fully worked example
Question: If the 3rd of the month is a Tuesday, what day of the week is the 24th?
Step 1 - find the gap: 24 minus 3 is 21 days.
Step 2 - check for whole weeks: 21 divided by 7 is exactly 3 weeks, with no remainder.
Step 3 - because it is a whole number of weeks, the weekday is unchanged. The 24th is also a Tuesday.
Now a version with a remainder: if the 3rd is a Tuesday, what is the 26th? The gap is 23 days; 23 is 21 (three weeks, still Tuesday) plus 2 more days. Count two days on from Tuesday: Wednesday, then Thursday. The 26th is a Thursday. Splitting the jump into whole weeks plus a tiny remainder is the whole trick.
A worked clock example
Question: A train leaves at 14:50 and the journey takes 95 minutes. What is the arrival time?
Work in minutes. 95 minutes is 1 hour and 35 minutes. Add the hour first: 14:50 becomes 15:50. Add the 35 minutes: 50 plus 35 is 85 minutes, which is 1 hour 25 minutes, so 15:50 rolls over to 16:25. Adding the whole hour before the loose minutes keeps the carry-over tidy and stops the classic "went past 60 without noticing" error.
The traps to warn your child about
- Inclusive versus exclusive counting. "From Monday to Friday" can mean four days or five depending on the wording. If a question says inclusive, count both endpoints.
- 12-hour and 24-hour muddle. 3pm is 15:00; forgetting to add 12 turns a right method into a wrong answer.
- Month lengths. When a problem crosses into a new month, remember that months have 30 or 31 days, and February has 28 (or 29 in a leap year).
- Counting the wrong direction. "Before" means step backwards through the week, not forwards.
- Losing the remainder. After subtracting whole weeks, don't forget to add the final few days.
How to practise this type
Little and often wins: five questions of this exact type each day for a week will do far more than fifty crammed into one sitting, because the method needs to become automatic rather than remembered. Our free verbal-reasoning worksheets are organised by exact question type, so you can drill days, dates and time problems in isolation before mixing them back in. The revision hub sequences the VR skills sensibly, and for the full landscape of what GL can ask, see our 21 VR types overview and the wider GL paper guide. Once the type feels effortless, fold it back into full timed mock papers so pacing develops alongside accuracy. For a parent marking at home, a wrong answer here almost always points to one of the five traps above - identifying which one is more useful than simply re-teaching the sum.
Frequently asked questions
How many days, dates and time questions are in a GL paper?
It varies by region and year, but three to five is typical. GL does not publish the exact mix in advance, so prepare for the type to appear even though it might not.
Does my child need to memorise the calendar?
No. They need the count-in-sevens habit and the days-in-each-month facts. Everything else is method, not memory.
What score does this contribute to?
Each correct answer adds to the raw score, which is converted to a standardised age score (roughly 69 to 141, adjusted for your child's exact age in months). Getting reliable marks on quick-win types like this one is a sensible way to lift that score.