SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 13 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 25 of 98

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.

Study the given Venn diagram and answer the question that follows. Smart only 73 | Smart and Brave 23 | Brave only 63 | Smart, Brave and Women 3 | Smart and Women 13 | Brave and Women 14 | Women only 53 How many women are either smart or brave or both?

(a)26
(b)23
(c)27
(d)30

Answer

Why

Correct — D. The question stays inside the women circle and asks for everyone there who is also smart or brave.

Rule: stay inside the named set, then take its overlaps with the other two, counting the centre once.

Women who are smart = 13
Women who are brave = 14
Women who are both = 3

13 + 14 + 3 = 30 → option (d)

Why the others are wrong

(a)
26 — 26 is 23 + 3 — the smart-and-brave overlap plus the centre. Those 23 lie outside the women circle, so they cannot count.
(b)
23 — 23 is the smart-and-brave overlap on its own. It sits wholly outside the women circle, so none of those 23 are women.
(c)
27 — 27 is 13 + 14 with the centre left out. The 3 at the centre are women who are both smart and brave, and or both requires them to be counted once.

Concept

The stem is printed inside the figure: study the given Venn diagram and answer the question that follows — how many women are either smart or brave or both.

The diagram shows three overlapping circles labelled Smart, Brave and Women. The regions carry 73 (smart only), 63 (brave only), 53 (women only), 23 (smart and brave), 13 (smart and women), 14 (brave and women) and 3 (all three).

Or both is the instruction that keeps the centre in. The phrase describes a union, and in a union the people who belong to both sets are counted once — not twice, and not zero times.

Only women are in scope, so the three largest figures on the diagram, 73, 63 and 53, are all irrelevant. Two of them lie outside the women circle, and the third is the women who are neither smart nor brave.

Key facts

Inside the women circle, 13 are also smart, 14 are also brave and 3 are both.
13 + 14 + 3 = 30.
The 53 in the women-only region are neither smart nor brave and are excluded.

Study next

Venn questions distinguishing either-or-both from exactly oneReading a union inside a restricted set rather than across the whole diagramVenn questions asking for the complement of a region

Common traps

Dropping the 3 at the centre because it has already been used in some other reading.
Adding the 23 who are smart and brave, none of whom lie inside the women circle.
Adding the whole women circle, 53 + 13 + 14 + 3, and answering 83.

Wording carries the whole question here — either, or both, only and exactly one each pick out a different set of regions. Reasoning Q.23 of 13 Sep 2024, 16:00 uses the same three-circle layout but asks for only-regions, which is the opposite reading.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.