Strong band · 120+
Analogies and lexical relations both held, including the abstract pairs where the relation is causal rather than categorical — drought is to rain as famine is to what. Eight of the fourteen items here are analogies, so the score leans on relational thinking as much as on vocabulary; the synonym and antonym items (ephemeral, ubiquitous, meticulous) supply the lexical half. One caveat matters more here than anywhere else on the profile: this is the most language-dependent of the four scales, and it reads the language you took the test in. If that is not your strongest language, the number understates you — usually by six to twelve points.
Mid-band · 90–119
The everyday analogies and the category items went in; the drop tends to sit on rarer vocabulary and on pairs whose relation is abstract rather than concrete — spark is to fire as seed is to what. This scale depends on language more than any other here. It tests the language you sat it in, and taking it in your stronger language typically moves the band by six to twelve points — a wider swing than most people assume when they compare their four bars. Vocabulary is also the most straightforwardly accumulable thing measured on this test: it grows by reading, at any age.
Below sample · under 90
Verbal items rest on two things — the stock of words you have and the relations you can see between them — and on this sitting they did not carry. Read the number with its largest caveat attached: this scale is by far the most language-sensitive of the four, so if you took the test in a second language, that is what it measured. Even in a first language the vocabulary items sample a register (ephemeral, ubiquitous) that reading habit predicts better than ability does. Which also makes it the most movable of the four scales, over years rather than weeks: it grows with what you read.