SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 18 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.

Parts of the following sentence have been given as options. Select the option that contains an error. No other place in this country is so better as Gulmarg, Kashmir.

(a)No other place
(b)in this country is
(c)so better as
(d)Gulmarg, Kashmir

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The faulty segment is so better as, which welds two different comparison frames together.

The frame so ... as takes the positive degree: 'is so good as Gulmarg'. The comparative better takes than: 'is better than Gulmarg'.

Either repair reads naturally, but the sentence as printed uses neither. Segment (c) is where the sentence breaks.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
No other place — No other place is a sound subject. 'No other' plus a singular noun is the standard way English states a superlative idea as a comparison, and it needs no repair.
(b)
in this country is — The verb is agrees with the singular 'place', and 'in this country' is an ordinary prepositional phrase narrowing it. Nothing in this segment is wrong.
(d)
Gulmarg, Kashmir — Gulmarg, Kashmir is only the thing being compared against, a place name with its region after a comma. The fault lies in the words that introduce it.

Concept

English compares in three degrees, and each degree has a fixed partner word.

The positive degree pairs with as ... as or so ... as — 'as good as', 'not so good as'. The comparative pairs with than — 'better than'. The superlative pairs with the — 'the best'.

Error-spotting items plant a mixed frame far more often than a rare word: a comparative inside an equality frame, as here, or 'more better', or 'than' after a plain adjective.

Find the degree word first, then check whether its partner is the right one.

The sentence means what a superlative would mean — that Gulmarg is the best — but states it as a comparison, which is why both repairs sound equally natural.

Key facts

So ... as and as ... as take the positive degree, so 'so good as', never 'so better as'.
A comparative adjective takes than: better than, larger than, more useful than.
'No other place is better than X' is the comparative way of saying X is the best.

Study next

Degrees of comparison and the partner word each one takesDouble comparatives such as 'more better' and 'most highest' in error-spottingRewriting a superlative sentence in its 'no other' comparative form

Common traps

Reading 'so better as' at speed and hearing the idiomatic 'so much better'.
Suspecting the place name in segment (d) because it carries a comma.

Error-spotting is packaged in more than one way. This shift's English Q.3 splits a sentence into four printed segments and keys 'where we should visit several famous'; here the segments are the options themselves. The packaging changes, the task does not: find the part that breaks.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.