This was lying on the kitchen table earlier today:

You might remember my sister Alice went through the eleven-plus, and got through. Now it'll be younger sister Lucy's turn, so back out come all the tests, mock papers and guides.

This particular book was lying open at this page:

See if you can spot the problem I had with that page.

In the mean time, another problem I have with it is that the question itself is bloody difficult!

Have a look at the example first. Would you immediately associate "stable" with barn and shed, and with steady and firm?

Move on to number 25. What word would go with bat and stick, and also society and group? I've not got the answer sheet and I'll confess, I've no idea what the answer is. Maybe it's 'racket', but that strikes me as a bit high-brow to expect 11-year-olds to associate racketeering with groups. It can't be.

Am I being unduly thick? By all means let me know the answer if it's obvious, but it's not to me! I reckon 26 is probably "segment", 27 "thick", and 28 "swamp". Even then, if you soak something, do you swamp it? I'm fairly sure my eleven-year-old self would have been lucky to get one mark for writing his name on the paper, let alone scoring marks on the questions inside.

And yes, the original problem is that the book's author has been unable to spell "separate" correctly. And yet we're supposed to know what links bat, stick, society and group. Separate planets.

Update: Congratulations to OJ, who supplies the following:

"I had to resort to a thesaurus, but I'm pretty sure that number 25 would be "club". I got "swamp" and "thick" as well, although I had to look over "stable" to see what they were getting at.

"As I remember it, the 11+ scholarship examination we sat just involved some colouring in, didn't it?"

And many thanks to "AN Other" on the comments, who comes up with a better answer for number 26: perhaps it's "part", not "segment".

AN also attempts number 29, which you can just make out in the picture. They reckon class/category and arrange/order are linked by "sort", whereas earlier I'd have gone for "group". It's a mess.