SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 14 of 100

Text as printed on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; answer per SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 6 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. The questions and options here are reproduced as printed on a candidate's own response sheet for this shift — the Commission's text, unchanged. Each answer is SSC's tentative key as marked on that sheet; SSC allowed challenges to it and never publishes a final key. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Select the correct mirror image of the given figure when the mirror is placed at MN.

Answer

Why

Correct — A. MN is a vertical line standing to the right of the row, so the reflection is a left-to-right flip, never a top-to-bottom one.

Rule: the character nearest the mirror stays nearest the mirror, and every glyph is turned back-to-front.

The row reads j F d 3 7 A e, with e closest to MN. Reading the reflection from the left therefore gives e, A, 7, 3, d, F, j — the row in reverse.

Option (a) shows exactly that order with every glyph laterally inverted: the F opens to the left, the 3 opens to the right, and the d has become a b.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Option (b) reverses the row but then swaps the two glyphs nearest the mirror — it shows A before e, when e sits closest to MN in the question and must stay closest in the reflection.
(c)
Option (c) has the order right, but the F still opens to the right and the d is still a d. Two glyphs left facing their original way is something a mirror cannot do.
(d)
Option (d) turns the A upside down, which is a top-to-bottom flip that a vertical mirror never produces, and it leaves the 3 facing the way it faces in the question.

Concept

A vertical mirror beside a row does two things at once, and both have to be carried out.

First the order reverses: whatever stood nearest the mirror appears nearest the mirror in the reflection, so reading the image left to right walks the original right to left.

Second, every character is turned back-to-front about a vertical axis. A shape that is symmetric left-to-right comes through looking unchanged, which is why such letters are no help in telling options apart.

A is the only left-to-right symmetric character in this row, so every other glyph has to visibly change shape in the correct answer. That is enough to reject two of the options without even checking the order.

Key facts

A vertical mirror line reverses the left-to-right order while the top and bottom of each character stay where they are.
A horizontal mirror line, the water image, keeps the order and flips each character top to bottom instead.
Under a lateral flip d reads as b, F opens leftwards and 3 opens rightwards.
Left-to-right symmetric characters such as A, M, T, U and 8 look unchanged in a vertical mirror.

Study next

Water images of letter and digit stringsMirror images where MN is drawn above or below the figure rather than beside itPaper folding and punching, where the fold line plays the part of the mirror

Common traps

Reversing the order but forgetting to invert each individual glyph
Flipping the characters top to bottom, which produces the water image and not the mirror image
Reading the answer row from the wrong end, so the character nearest MN ends up furthest from it

MN is drawn as a plain line beside a string that mixes capitals, small letters and digits, so both the reversal and the shape of each glyph have to be checked.

This shift also asks a mirror item at Reasoning Q.8, and 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.12 uses the same MN convention.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.