SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 12 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 6 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 as shown below.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. MN is drawn as a vertical line to the right of the string, so the reflection is a left-right flip.

Rule: the order of the characters reverses, and each character is itself written back to front.

M 5 h 9 s g read backwards is g s 9 h 5 M. Now reverse every one of those individually: the g and the s turn round, the 9 puts its tail on the other side, the h moves its stem to the right of its arch, and the 5 faces the other way.

M is symmetric about a vertical axis, so it alone survives unchanged and it closes the line.

Option (c) is the string that shows exactly that — a reversed g, a reversed s, a reversed 9, a reversed h, a reversed 5, then an upright M.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Option (a) leaves the g, the s and the 5 in their ordinary shapes and prints s before g. A mirror reverses every character, not a selection of them.
(b)
Option (b) is the string turned through 180°. The order reverses as a mirror would, but each character is flipped top for bottom instead of left for right, so the M ends up as a W and the 9 as a 6. A vertical mirror never turns a character over.
(d)
Option (d) reverses the g, the s and the 5 correctly but shows the 9 and the h upside down, as a 6 and an inverted h. It mixes a top-for-bottom flip into a left-for-right one.

Concept

A mirror placed on a vertical line swaps left and right and leaves top and bottom alone. Two things follow, and both must be done: the characters come out in the opposite order, and each character is itself laterally reversed.

A water image is the other reflection — mirror line horizontal. It flips top and bottom and leaves the reading order untouched. Options built from the wrong reflection look convincingly reversed at a glance, which is why they are offered.

Digits make this harder than letters, because 6 and 9 are rotations of each other rather than reflections. Turning a 9 upside down gives a 6, but reflecting it in a vertical mirror gives a backwards 9 that matches no ordinary character at all.

Key facts

A vertical mirror reverses the order of the characters as well as each character's own shape.
A water image flips top for bottom and keeps the left-to-right order unchanged.
A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X and Y are symmetric about a vertical axis, so a vertical mirror leaves them looking the same.

Study next

Water-image questions, where the mirror line is drawn horizontally under the figureCharacters unchanged by reflection, which cut the work on any mirror question

Common traps

Choosing option (b), the 180° turn, because it reverses the reading order just as a mirror does.
Reversing the order of the characters and forgetting to reverse the characters themselves.
Assuming a 9 becomes a 6 in a mirror, when 6 is the rotated form and not the reflected one.

SSC draws the mirror as a labelled line MN beside the figure and builds the wrong options out of near-misses — a 180° turn at option (b), a mixed flip at option (d), a half-done reversal at option (a). The same set-up appears on 9 Sep 2024, 12:30, Reasoning Q.2 and Q.3.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.