Letter and Number Coding

Letter and number coding is the foundation of every coding question in SBI Clerk Reasoning, and it turns entirely on one skill: knowing where each letter sits in the alphabet. Once you can place any letter's position value in a second, the shifting, adding and reversing tricks become mechanical. This topic gives you the position values, the EJOTY memory hook and the opposite-letter rule, so that a coded word never makes you count on your fingers from A again under exam pressure.

Assign Position Values A=1 to Z=26

Every trick begins by replacing a letter with its forward position: A is 1, B is 2, and so on up to Z, which is 26. Most coding patterns are just arithmetic on these numbers — add 3, subtract 1, or reverse them. The candidate who has these values automatic saves the two or three seconds per letter that decide a speed section. Do not memorise all twenty-six blindly; instead anchor to a few landmarks and count a step or two from the nearest one, which is far more reliable in a tense hall.

The EJOTY Trick for Instant Position

EJOTY is the single most useful memory hook in coding: E is 5, J is 10, O is 15, T is 20 and Y is 25. These five anchors are spaced exactly five letters apart, so any letter is at most two steps from one of them. To place R, start at O (15) and count P, Q, R to get 18. To place W, start at Y (25) and step back to get 23. With EJOTY fixed in your head, you never scan the whole alphabet — you jump to the nearest anchor and nudge.

Opposite Letters and the 27 Rule

The opposite of a letter is its mirror from the other end: A pairs with Z, B with Y, C with X, and so on. The shortcut is that a letter and its opposite always add to 27. So the opposite of G (7) is the letter at 27 minus 7, which is 20, or T. The opposite of M (13) is 27 minus 13, which is 14, or N — the famous middle pair. This rule powers a whole class of questions where a letter is replaced by its alphabet mirror, and it removes any need to write the reversed alphabet out.

Position: use EJOTY anchors Opposite letter: 27 − position Middle pair: M↔N

Shifting Letters Forward and Backward

Many codes shift each letter by a fixed step: +1 turns CAT into DBU, and −2 turns DOG into BME. Read the first letter of the code against the first letter of the word to find the step, then apply the same shift to the rest. When a shift runs past Z, wrap around to A — X plus 3 becomes A. A reliable habit is to check the step on two letters before trusting it on the whole word, because setters sometimes alternate the shift (+1, +2, +1, +2) to catch candidates who confirm the rule from a single letter.

Solved Examples

Example 1: If FROG is coded as HTQI, find the code for BIRD. Each letter shifts +2 (F→H, R→T). So B→D, I→K, R→T, D→F, giving DKTF.

Example 2: Replace each letter of LAMP by its opposite. L(12)→15=O, A→Z, M→N, P(16)→11=K, so the code is OZNK.

✗ Counting from A to reach R (slow, error-prone)  |  ✓ Jumping from anchor O=15 and stepping to R=18