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Aon Grid Challenge: Prepare for Working-Memory and Spatial Tasks
Prepare for Aon Grid Challenge with original ordered-recall and spatial drills. Check working-memory errors, rotation rules, and the limits of practice scores.
The Aon Grid Challenge, officially styled gridChallenge, asks you to retain information while processing something else. Preparation should therefore test two things together: whether you remember the locations in order, and whether you can complete the intervening spatial judgment without losing that sequence.
Start by confirming the module name in your invitation. A grid-looking task is not necessarily gridChallenge: Aon's gapChallenge concerns deductive reasoning, while switchChallenge concerns symbol permutations. This article focuses on working memory and spatial processing, with original drills that make location errors, order errors, and judgment errors visible.
The drills are independent preparation, not copied assessment items or a simulator of Aon's scoring.
What Aon's official material actually establishes
Official provider facts: Aon's candidate page lists gridChallenge as a nine-minute working-memory assessment with nine tasks of varying difficulty. The described demand is retaining information while processing other information. These are provider-level descriptions; your invitation and on-screen instructions govern your session. Aon candidate preparation
Official demonstration observed: the video linked from that page shows highlighted dots on a spatial field, an intervening “rotated but identical?” comparison, and a recall prompt asking for the dots' locations and appearance order. The demonstrated dot field is irregular, rather than the tidy coordinate grid used in our exercises below. Do not infer one fixed layout, exposure time, or number of remembered positions from an example video. Aon gridChallenge demonstration
Candidate-report boundary: public 2026 aviation discussions mention Aon modules and difficulty, but we did not establish two independent current-cycle reports for one technical employer. We consequently make no claims about a technical employer's assessment battery, cutoff, recruitment stages, or acceptance probability.
Preparation inference: ordered recall and spatial judgments deserve separate diagnosis and combined rehearsal. A commercial practice game's percentages or levels describe that product's rules, unless Aon or your employer explicitly confirms otherwise.
Confirm the task before trying a strategy
Read the introduction and provided examples carefully. Establish what must be remembered, whether order matters, what response the comparison requires, and how to submit. An instruction to recall order cannot be satisfied by selecting the correct set of locations in an arbitrary sequence.
Also check the permitted resources. A paper coordinate log is useful when designing your own practice; it is not automatically permitted during a working-memory assessment. Use external notes, recording, or other aids only if the actual instructions explicitly allow them.
If you require an accessibility adjustment, contact the requesting organization before beginning. Describe the functional issue and ask for the approved arrangement. Do not assume a public simulation's settings establish the real assessment's adjustments or retest policy.
During practice, choose short, stable location descriptions such as “upper right, lower left, center.” They can help expose what you remembered. A real field may contain several nearby dots in the same region, so a broad label is insufficient when it fails to identify the exact position. Test whether your label preserves the needed detail rather than assuming a mnemonic always helps.
Do not rename a position halfway through a sequence. If you initially encode a dot relative to the left edge, then later reinterpret it relative to the center, you may introduce an error that looks like forgetting. Stable anchors are a preparation technique, not a guaranteed scoring advantage.
Original drill: the right locations in the wrong order
For a clear demonstration, use this original regular 3×3 grid. Rows run top to bottom; columns run left to right. Coordinates are one-based.
column 1 column 2 column 3
row 1 • • •
row 2 • • •
row 3 • • •
Show these locations one at a time, covering each before revealing the next:
First: (1,3) — upper right
Second: (3,1) — lower left
Third: (2,2) — center
The exact answer is (1,3), (3,1), (2,2). A response of (3,1), (1,3), (2,2) contains every correct location but swaps the first two. A response of (1,3), (3,2), (2,2) preserves the sequence structure but substitutes one location.
Those are different failures. The first suggests checking how you retained temporal order. The second suggests checking whether your spatial description distinguished lower left from lower middle.
For this drill, record both whether the sequence was exact and how many positions were correct at their corresponding sequence indices. The swapped response has one of three index positions correct; the substituted response has two of three. These are our diagnostic measures, not Aon's scoring formula.
A practice partner can generate another sequence using the same grid. Keep the order hidden until your response is complete. If you study all three locations simultaneously, you are rehearsing a different task from sequential presentation.
Add interference without abandoning either task
Now interleave a simple visual judgment after each revealed location. Use a task you can check unambiguously—for example, whether a small pattern is symmetric about a stated vertical axis.
An original trial can run as follows:
Show (1,3), hide it -> judge pattern A
Show (3,1), hide it -> judge pattern B
Show (2,2), hide it -> judge pattern C
Then recall the three locations in order
The expected recall remains (1,3), (3,1), (2,2). The judgment does not transform the remembered dot unless the instructions explicitly say that it does. This distinction matters: the activity switches, but the memory target remains the earlier sequence.
First try a memory-only trial and a judgment-only trial. Then combine them with new material of comparable difficulty. If both isolated components are accurate but the combined trial is weak, you have evidence of a problem maintaining the sequence during interference in this practice setup.
That observation does not establish a stable personal trait or your likely hiring result. It simply helps choose the next rehearsal: shorter sequences, clearer spatial anchors, or careful verification of the comparison rule.
Do not protect recall by ignoring every judgment. A dual-task instruction asks you to perform both activities. The official sources reviewed here do not establish a strategy in which sacrificing one component is optimal, nor do they publish a universal weighting you can exploit.
Original spatial exercise: symmetry is an exact relation
In these patterns, X marks a filled position and . an empty position. Ask whether each row mirrors across the vertical center line.
Pattern A Pattern B
X . X X . X
. X . . X .
X . X X . .
Pattern A is vertically symmetric. Pattern B is not: its bottom-left filled position lacks a bottom-right counterpart.
Count alone is insufficient. Another pattern can have the same number of filled positions as a symmetric pattern while placing them differently. The criterion is corresponding positions, not visual density or a general impression that the shape looks balanced.
For a 3×3 grid, the vertical mirror of (row, column) is (row, 4-column). Thus (3,1) corresponds to (3,3), while center-column positions map to themselves. This coordinate rule verifies the original exercise; you do not need to perform formal arithmetic during the real assessment unless it helps you follow the presented instructions.
If the comparison specifies another axis, re-evaluate the relation. Vertical symmetry and horizontal symmetry are not interchangeable. A shape can satisfy one and fail the other.
Original spatial exercise: distinguish a rotation from a reflection
Consider this L-shaped arrangement:
Original Clockwise 90°
X . . X X X
X . . X . .
X X . . . .
The right pattern is a clockwise quarter-turn of the left. In our one-based 3×3 coordinates, the transformation is (row, column) -> (column, 4-row).
A left-right reflection instead produces:
. . X
. . X
. X X
That reflected arrangement is not one of the original shape's quarter-turn rotations. The difference is easy to miss if you only track the long arm and overlook the short arm's direction.
For comparison practice, locate a distinctive feature: an endpoint, notch, or unequal arm. Rotate that feature mentally and check the rest of the pattern. Similar overall silhouettes are insufficient when one local detail differs.
These transformations apply to our original regular grid. They do not imply that every Aon comparison uses this grid, permits only 90-degree turns, or contains this L shape. Follow the actual comparison instruction rather than importing a rule from this exercise.
Keep a practice log that does not pretend to be a score report
A small diagnostic log is more useful than chasing a commercial simulator's “pass” label.
| Practice observation | Likely issue to inspect | Next independent rehearsal |
|---|---|---|
| Correct locations, swapped order | Temporal sequence representation | Recall short new sequences with explicit first/second/third order. |
| One nearby location substituted | Spatial distinction | Use more precise anchors on a slightly irregular field. |
| Accurate memory-only, weaker combined trial | Interference in this setup | Combine a shorter sequence with a clearly defined judgment. |
| Accurate recall, wrong comparison | Spatial rule misunderstanding | Check an isolated mirror-versus-rotation counterexample. |
| Correct intention, unintended selection | Input control or submission behavior | Re-read the available interface example and confirm controls. |
Record raw observations, such as “two of three locations correct at their indices, two of three judgments correct.” Do not translate that into an Aon percentile, cutoff, or expected employer decision.
Use new sequences for later trials. Repeating the same positions can improve familiarity with that sequence while obscuring how you handle unfamiliar information. Change one factor at a time so you can identify what made the trial harder.
Stop a practice session when errors become hard to interpret because you are distracted or rushing. More attempts are not automatically more useful. Familiarity with instructions can reduce avoidable mistakes; this guide does not claim that a short drill increases general intelligence or guarantees assessment success.
Use the real instructions as the final authority
Before a timed activity, confirm the module and response controls. During the activity, retain the requested information while answering the presented judgment. If a technical issue occurs, follow the stated support procedure and report the observable problem; do not assume restarting gives a fresh attempt.
Afterward, interpret any available feedback within its stated context. A difficult-feeling round does not reveal your percentile, and another candidate's recollection does not establish your employer's threshold.
For gridChallenge itself, the preparation target is clear: preserve both exact locations and their order while continuing to process the other task.