What this practice covers
These questions are drawn from past CIE 9701 Chemistry papers and filtered to organic synthesis. You answer, you find out immediately whether you were right, and you get the reasoning for the correct option and for each distractor. Wrong answers go to a mistakes locker so you can come back to exactly those.
Practice is free. You need an account only so your progress and your mistakes are still there next time.
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What examiners see students get wrong here
These are the errors that cost marks on organic synthesis, taken from our own topic notes. Read them before you practise and you will recognise the traps in the questions.
- Starting to plan without counting the carbons, and missing that a chain-lengthening step is needed.
- Giving a reagent without its conditions. Both are usually required.
- Using KCN on an alcohol. It reacts with a halogenoalkane, so the alcohol has to be converted first.
- Trying to oxidise a tertiary alcohol, or a ketone, in a route. Neither happens.
- Forgetting that direct esterification is reversible and low-yielding, when an acyl chloride would be the better answer for a good yield.
- Naming a reagent correctly but the reaction type wrongly, when the question asks for both.
Revise it first
If any of the above is unfamiliar, work through the notes before practising: Organic synthesis revision notes.