SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 21 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 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.

Answer

Why

Correct — B. MN is a vertical line standing to the right of the string, so this is a left-right reflection.

Rule: a vertical mirror does two things at once — it reverses the order of the characters and it flips each character laterally. Doing only one of the two is the standard error here.

The string reads v c t m a, so the reflected order is a m t c v.

Now flip each glyph. The a turns back to front, with its bowl on the right. The t hooks to the left at its foot. The c opens to the left.

The m and the v are symmetric about a vertical axis, so the flip leaves them looking exactly as they were.

A reversed a, then m, then a left-hooking t, then a left-opening c, then v — that is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Option (a) reverses the order to a m t c v but prints every glyph upright. Its a, t and c face the normal way, so the letters themselves have not been reflected.
(c)
Option (c) flips the t and nothing else. Its a still carries the bowl on the left and its c still opens to the right, so two glyphs have been left unreflected.
(d)
Option (d) is a correct mirror except for its first character, which is a reversed e, not a reversed a. The string ends in a, so the reflection has to begin with one.

Concept

For a mirror on a vertical line, picture what a reader standing behind the glass would see: the leftmost object becomes the rightmost, and every asymmetric shape turns about a vertical axis.

That splits the string into two kinds of character. m and v are symmetric about a vertical axis and come through the mirror unchanged, so they can never separate the options. The asymmetric glyphs — a, c and t here — are the ones that decide it, and that is where SSC puts the differences.

MN labels the mirror line, drawn as a vertical segment to the right of the string. It is not a character in the string and takes no part in the reflection.

Key facts

A vertical mirror reverses the order of the characters and flips each character left-to-right.
Lower-case m and v are symmetric about a vertical axis, so a vertical mirror leaves them looking the same.
The mirrored string begins with a reversed a because the original string ends with a.

Study next

Mirror images of letter strings with the mirror line drawn verticallyWater images, where the mirror is horizontal, character order is kept and each glyph flips top to bottomWorking out which letters and digits survive a vertical mirror unchanged

Common traps

Reversing the order of the characters but printing them the right way round.
Flipping the glyphs but leaving them in their original order.
Seeing an unchanged m or v and concluding the option forgot to flip it.

SSC marks the mirror line with a labelled segment such as MN and then builds options that differ in a single glyph, so the whole string has to be checked rather than its first letter. A water-image item would keep the order and flip each character top to bottom instead.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.