The position(s) of how many letters will remain unchanged if all the letters in the word ‘MEADOW’ are arranged in English alphabetical order?

Correct — A. Rule: sort the letters of MEADOW alphabetically and compare the two rows slot by slot.

M E A D O W
A D E M O W

Slots 1 to 4: M → A, E → D, A → E, D → M — all four move.

Slots 5 and 6: O stays O and W stays W.

Two positions survive the sort, which is option (a).

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  One — Under-counts. O in slot 5 and W in slot 6 both survive the sort, so the total is two. Stopping at the first match is the usual cause.
• (c)
  None — MEADOW ends in O, W, and those are already the fifth and sixth letters in alphabetical order. A count of none would require every letter to move.
• (d)
  Three — Over-counts. Slots 1 to 4 all change — M, E, A, D become A, D, E, M — so there is no third fixed position to find.

The test is positional, not alphabetical. Sorting MEADOW gives ADEMOW, and a letter holds its place only when its rank in the sorted order equals its slot number in the word.

The quick route is to rank the letters first — A 1, D 2, E 3, M 4, O 5, W 6 — and then read those ranks off the original word, which turns MEADOW into 4 3 1 2 5 6. Every slot where the rank equals the slot number is a fixed letter, and here that is slots 5 and 6.

Key facts

• MEADOW sorted alphabetically is ADEMOW.
• A letter is unchanged only when its rank among the word's letters equals its slot number.
• Rewriting MEADOW as ranks gives 4 3 1 2 5 6, which makes the comparison a one-line check.
• MEADOW has no repeated letter, so no tie-breaking is needed.

Common traps

• Sorting the word correctly but then comparing letters rather than positions.
• Counting a letter as fixed because it appears somewhere in both rows.
• Mis-sorting the letters, which changes the answer without changing your confidence.

No directly related past PYQ was found.