SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 15 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 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.

Parts of a sentence are given below in jumbled order. Arrange the parts in the correct order to form a meaningful sentence. A. Smoking in B. Your youth stunts C. The body and D. Clouds the brain

(a)DCBA
(b)DBCA
(c)ABCD
(d)CABD

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Build the sentence from its hooks, not from the labels.

A. Smoking in ends on a preposition, so a noun phrase must follow, and B. Your youth supplies it. Smoking in your youth is the subject.

B also carries the finite verb stunts, whose object is the body in C. C then ends on and, which has to join a second verb phrase, and D. Clouds the brain is one.

Reading A B C D gives: Smoking in your youth stunts the body and clouds the brain → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
DCBA — DCBA opens on Clouds the brain, a finite verb with no subject in front of it. A sentence cannot begin with the second half of a compound predicate.
(b)
DBCA — DBCA also starts on Clouds the brain, and then strands Smoking in at the very end, leaving its preposition with nothing to govern.
(d)
CABD — CABD opens on The body and, so the coordinator and dangles at the front with nothing on its left to join.

Concept

A four-part jumble is solved by grammatical hooks, not by guessing the writer's meaning. Each fragment ends or begins on a word that can attach only one way.

Three hooks settle this item. A ends on the preposition in, which demands a noun phrase. C ends on and, which demands a second element parallel to the first. D begins on the finite verb clouds, so it cannot open the sentence.

Once D is ruled out of first place, only an order that keeps and sitting between two verb phrases survives.

Each part is printed with a capital letter — Smoking, Your, The, Clouds — so capitalisation is no guide at all to which part comes first.

Key facts

A fragment ending in a preposition must be followed by the noun phrase that preposition governs.
A fragment ending in and must be followed by an element parallel to what came before it.
A finite verb such as clouds cannot open a declarative sentence.
The assembled sentence reads: Smoking in your youth stunts the body and clouds the brain.

Study next

Parallel structure after and, where both joined halves must be the same kind of phraseFive-part jumbles labelled P, Q, R, S, where the same hook method applies

Common traps

Assuming the printed order ABCD must be a decoy and rejecting it on sight.
Reading Your youth stunts as a complete clause and making B the opening part.
Treating the capital letter on each part as a signal that it starts the sentence.

The four-part sentence jumble recurs through CGL 2024 with the same hook logic and a different scrambling.

DCBA is the key at 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.10, and DBCA at 23 Sep 2024, 12:30, English Q.16 — so the printed order is sometimes right and sometimes not, and only the hooks tell you which.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.