SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 10 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 10 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.

In a certain code language, ‘make some more’ is coded as ‘pb gq st’ and ‘need more time’ is coded as ‘ru ek gq’. What is the code for ‘more’ in that language?

(a)pb
(b)st
(c)gq
(d)ek

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Compare the two lines for what they have in common.

'make some more' is 'pb gq st'
'need more time' is 'ru ek gq'

Rule: the only word common to both sentences must carry the only code common to both.

The shared word is more. The shared code is gq — pb, st, ru and ek each appear once only.

So 'more' is coded gq, option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
pb — pb appears in the first line only, so it codes 'make' or 'some'. A word that occurs in both sentences cannot be coded by a symbol that occurs in one.
(b)
st — st is also confined to the first line, which rules it out on the same test. Whether it stands for 'make' or 'some' cannot be settled from these two lines.
(d)
ek — ek appears in the second line only, so it codes 'need' or 'time'. Nothing in the question decides which of the two.

Concept

Word-substitution codes are solved by intersection, not by position. The codes are printed in scrambled order deliberately, so 'make' is not 'pb' merely because both come first.

Set the two lines side by side. Exactly one English word is shared and exactly one code is shared, so those two must correspond.

Everything else stays undecided, and that is the normal state of affairs — two sentences can only ever fix the overlap.

Two sentences with a single word in common determine exactly one code.

A third sentence would be needed to pin any of the other four, and no correct answer here depends on them.

Key facts

'more' is the only word appearing in both sentences.
'gq' is the only code appearing in both coded strings.
pb, st, ru and ek each occur once, so none can stand for a shared word.

Study next

Word codes given over three sentences, where two words can be pinnedItems where two words are shared and a third line resolves the pairLetter-level codes solved by the same intersection idea

Common traps

Matching codes to words in the order they are printed.
Choosing a code that occurs in one sentence for a word that occurs in both.
Trying to decode all six words when the question asks for one.

SSC usually keeps these to two sentences with a single overlap, which makes them among the quickest marks in the section.

The letter-to-digit version, run on two near-identical words, appears in the same shift — also 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.3.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.