SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 13 of 99

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.

Select the option figure that will replace the question mark (?) in the figure given below to complete the pattern.

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Rule: the four quarters of the large figure are mirror images of one another, so the missing quarter is the lower-left quarter flipped left to right.

Each quarter carries the same three marks: a long straight line near its outer edge, a bracket of one horizontal and one vertical segment, and a small circle hung off the bracket's corner on a short diagonal.

In the lower-left quarter the bracket's arms run right and up from its corner and the circle hangs down-left. Mirrored sideways, the missing quarter's arms run left and up, the circle hangs down-right, and the long line stays near the bottom edge.

One mark more belongs to it. The star drawn where the two dividing lines cross sends a ray into each quarter, so the answer also needs a short diagonal at its inner top corner. Option (b) carries all four marks and nothing else.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Option (a) has every required mark and then adds a long slanted line down its right-hand side. No quarter of the large figure carries a second long line.
(c)
Option (c) carries that stray slanted line and also drops the long line near the bottom edge. That bottom line is present in the lower-left quarter and must survive the mirror.
(d)
Option (d) has the bracket, the circle and the bottom line, but no short diagonal at its inner top corner. The central star's ray into this quarter is missing.

Concept

A complete-the-pattern figure is usually one motif repeated under a symmetry. Name the symmetry before you compare options.

Here the upper-right quarter is the upper-left mirrored across the vertical centre line, and the lower-left quarter is the upper-left mirrored across the horizontal one. That fixes the missing quarter twice over, as the lower-left mirrored sideways or the upper-right mirrored downwards.

Marks that straddle the centre are the ones people forget. The star sits on the crossing point itself and contributes a fragment to every quarter.

The dividing lines are drawn solid where a quarter is present and dashed where it is missing. Those dashes mark the boundary of the answer space, not a feature of the answer.

Key facts

The upper-right quarter is the upper-left quarter mirrored across the vertical centre line.
The lower-left quarter is the upper-left quarter mirrored across the horizontal centre line.
The star sits where the two dividing lines cross, so one of its rays falls inside each quarter.

Study next

Naming the symmetry of a pattern before testing any optionElements that straddle a dividing line and split across cellsCounting marks in each option as an elimination step

Common traps

Copying the neighbouring quarter instead of mirroring it.
Missing the central star's ray, which is the whole difference at option (d).
Accepting an option that has every required mark plus one extra.

Picture pattern and picture series sit close together in these papers. Reasoning Q.4 of the same 13 Sep 2024, 12:30 paper runs a growth series of dashes, and Reasoning Q.19 of that paper asks for a figure analogy.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.