6.1 Grid Map Fundamentals & Directional Conventions

Why Map Reading Matters on the CritiCall Test

CritiCall's official candidate preparation guide lists "Determine routes and/or locations using very basic maps" as one of the specific abilities the test measures, and it adds an important reassurance: "No prior map-reading training or experience is required to correctly respond to these questions. However, candidates should know and be able to follow simple directions, such as 'left' and 'right.'" That single sentence describes the entire design philosophy behind this module. CritiCall is not testing whether you have memorized a real city's actual street network. It is testing whether you can hold a small mental model of directions North, East, South, West, left, and right steady enough to answer correctly and quickly, under a timer, while a simplified grid map sits on the screen.

Hiring agencies weight Map Reading at roughly 14% of the overall CritiCall battery — tied with Data Entry & Typing Speed as the second-heaviest single module, behind only Multitasking & Call Handling. On the job, the stakes are direct: a dispatcher who confuses "turn left" with "turn right" while relaying a route to a patrol unit, or who cannot tell that an officer is now heading west after two turns, sends help in the wrong direction during a live call. That real-world consequence is why CritiCall isolates directional reasoning as its own scored module rather than folding it into general reading comprehension.

Core Terms and the Turn-Conversion Rule

Every Map Reading item builds on a small, fixed vocabulary:

• Cardinal directions — North, East, South, West — fixed compass points that never change regardless of which way a vehicle happens to be pointed.
• Relative directions — left and right — directions defined by whoever's current heading is being described, not by the compass. "Turn left" means something different depending on which way you are already facing.
• Heading — the cardinal direction a unit, vehicle, or caller is currently facing or traveling.
• Compass rose — the small N/E/S/W (sometimes NE/NW/SE/SW) reference diagram printed on a map to establish orientation. CritiCall's practice items always include one, because the test does not assume real-world map literacy.
• Grid map — a simplified map made of straight, evenly spaced streets crossing at right angles, used because it renders quickly and leaves no ambiguity about distance (each grid square equals one block).

The single most-tested skill in this section is converting a starting heading plus a turn direction into a new heading. Because a right turn is always a 90-degree clockwise rotation and a left turn is always a 90-degree counterclockwise rotation, the eight possible combinations are fixed and memorizable:

Two shortcut rules fall directly out of this table and are worth memorizing rather than re-deriving each time:

1. Same-direction double turn reverses your original heading. Two rights or two lefts in a row always add up to a full 180-degree rotation, so you end up facing the exact opposite of where you started (North becomes South, East becomes West), regardless of whether both turns were left or both were right.
2. Opposite-direction double turn returns you to your original heading. A right followed by a left, or a left followed by a right, cancels out; you end up facing the same direction you started in, even though you have physically moved.

A compass mnemonic also helps under time pressure: reading clockwise from North, the compass points run N-E-S-W, the same order as "Never Eat Soggy Waffles." A right turn always moves you one step clockwise through that sequence (wrapping from West back to North); a left turn moves one step counterclockwise.

Reading a Grid Map: A Worked Example

CritiCall's own test-preparation guide recommends practicing on "a very simple map" using only left/right and North/East/South/West — describing "the quickest route from Point A to Point B." Picture a small grid: numbered north-south streets (1st through 6th, running west to east) crossing lettered east-west avenues (A through E, running south to north), with a compass rose in the corner showing North at the top.

A unit is stopped at 3rd Street and Avenue B, facing north. Dispatch needs the unit at 3rd Street and Avenue D — two blocks north on the same street. Because the unit is already facing north and Avenue D is straight ahead, the correct instruction is simply "continue straight, two blocks." Now change the destination to 5th Street and Avenue D: the unit must travel two blocks north, then two blocks east. Facing north, a right turn converts the heading to east (per the table above), so the correct instruction is "two blocks north, turn right, two blocks east" — not "turn left," which would send the unit facing west, away from the destination entirely.

This is exactly the item format CritiCall presents: a small grid, a starting heading, and a request to identify the correct turn or resulting direction, all under a strict per-item timer similar to the test's other modules. Missing a single turn direction on this kind of item does not just cost a point — on the job it sends a real unit the wrong way.

Common Traps

• Confusing a relative direction (left/right) with a cardinal one (North/East/South/West) when an item asks for a specific compass heading as the answer, not just "left" or "right."
• Forgetting that left/right depend entirely on the current heading — the same physical turn (for example, turning toward the river) can be a left turn for a unit heading north and a right turn for a unit heading south.
• Losing track of a heading after two or three turns in a row instead of working through the table turn by turn.