SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 11 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 25 of 95

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 10 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, 'DEMAND' is written as ‘410132144' and 'SUPPLY' is written as '194216161225'.How will 'PRODUCT' be written in that language?

(a)161815421320
(b)161830442320
(c)323615821640
(d)161542320

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Rule: replace each letter by its alphabet position, then double that value if the letter is a vowel.

DEMAND: D 4, E 5 → 10, M 13, A 1 → 2, N 14, D 4, strung together as 410132144.
SUPPLY: S 19, U 21 → 42, P 16, P 16, L 12, Y 25, strung together as 194216161225.

Now PRODUCT: P 16, R 18, O 15 → 30, D 4, U 21 → 42, C 3, T 20.

Strung together that is 16 18 30 4 42 3 20 = 161830442320, option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
161815421320 — This is PRODUCT with no doubling at all — 16 18 15 4 21 3 20. It ignores the vowel rule that DEMAND's E → 10 and A → 2 establish.
(c)
323615821640 — The rule is applied backwards, doubling the consonants and leaving the vowels alone — 32 36 15 8 21 6 40. Under that rule DEMAND would read 8 5 26 1 28 8, not 410132144.
(d)
161542320 — Nine digits where twelve are needed. PRODUCT encodes as 16, 18, 30, 4, 42, 3, 20, which is twelve digits, so a nine-digit string cannot carry all seven letters.

Concept

Letter-to-number codes are built on the alphabet position, A = 1 to Z = 26, with one modifier laid on top. That modifier is usually a class rule — vowels treated differently from consonants, say, or the first half of the alphabet from the second.

Find the modifier by looking for a value too big to be a position. In SUPPLY the value 42 exceeds 26, and the only letter that could produce it is U at 21 doubled. That single observation names the rule, and DEMAND then confirms it on E and A.

Both given words have to be decoded before the answer word is encoded. One word can fit several rules — DEMAND alone would also fit 'double the second and fourth letters' — and SUPPLY is what kills that reading, because its fourth letter P stays at 16.

Key facts

The code is alphabet position with every vowel's value doubled.
DEMAND becomes 4, 10, 13, 2, 14, 4 and is written 410132144.
SUPPLY becomes 19, 42, 16, 16, 12, 25 and is written 194216161225.
PRODUCT becomes 16, 18, 30, 4, 42, 3, 20 and is written 161830442320.

Study next

Codes that shift letters by a constant instead of replacing them with positionsCodes built on reverse alphabet position, 27 − nCodes that map a whole word to a single number, such as its letter count

Common traps

Reading the code left to right without first splitting it into one- and two-digit values.
Doubling every letter instead of only the vowels.
Treating Y as a vowel, when SUPPLY codes Y as 25 and leaves it undoubled.

A positional code of the same family appears at 12 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.10 (FIVE → 12184410 and FOUR → 12304236, where every letter is doubled), and a letter-shift code at 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, Reasoning Q.4 (TIZZ → VKBB). Reasoning Q.8 of the same paper codes a whole word as a single number.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.