SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 17 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 7 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.

Select the correct mirror image of the given figure when the mirror is placed at MN as shown below.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The figure is the string M a n G 3 f with MN standing as a vertical line to its right.

Rule: a vertical mirror reverses left and right only. The characters come back in reverse order, and each character is flipped sideways, never top to bottom.

So the image should read f, 3, G, n, a, M from left to right, with the f, the 3, the G, the n and the a all laterally reversed. M is symmetric about a vertical axis, so it is unchanged.

Option (c) is the only picture that does all of this — its G opens to the left and its final letter is still an M.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Its G is not reversed at all, still opening to the right, and the n appears as a u — a top-to-bottom flip, which a vertical mirror cannot produce.
(b)
The f, the 3, the n and the a are reversed correctly, but the G is printed normally. G has no vertical axis of symmetry, so one unreversed glyph rules the option out.
(d)
It matches the answer until the last glyph, where the M is printed as a W. That is the M turned upside down rather than reflected sideways.

Concept

A mirror at a vertical line does two things at once, and both must be checked.

First the order of the characters reverses, so the rightmost becomes leftmost. Second each glyph is reflected about a vertical axis.

Characters that are already symmetric about a vertical axis survive unchanged, which is why the M at the end of this string looks untouched while the G beside it must visibly turn round. Options are usually built by getting one of the two steps right and the other wrong.

The figures here are small strips of text. All four options open with the same reversed f and reversed 3, so the decision is made on the G and on the final letter, not at the start of the string.

Key facts

A vertical mirror reverses left-to-right order and reflects each glyph sideways, never turning a character upside down.
Capitals A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X and Y are unchanged by a vertical mirror because each is symmetric about a vertical axis.
G, f, 3, n and a have no vertical axis of symmetry, so each must visibly change in the image.

Study next

Mirror images of character strings, checked glyph by glyphWhich capitals and digits survive a vertical mirror unchangedWater images, where the flip is top-to-bottom and the character order stays put

Common traps

Checking only the first glyph or two, when every option here begins the same way.
Accepting an option because the characters are in reverse order, without testing that each one is itself reflected.
Confusing a water image with a mirror image, which is what turns M into W.

The mirror-at-MN stem also appears in this shift at Reasoning Q.23, and is set at Reasoning Q.12 on 11 Sep 2024, 09:00 and Q.10 on 11 Sep 2024, 12:30.

When the figure is a text string rather than a shape, the decision usually turns on one asymmetric letter.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.