SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 24 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 option figure in which the given figure (X) is embedded (rotation is NOT allowed).

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Figure (X) is one straight line running from lower left to upper right, with a solid arrowhead at both ends. That is the whole of it — no box, no second line.

Rule: rotation is not allowed, so the match must keep the same slant, and both arrowheads must be there, pointing outwards.

Option (d) shows an octagon with a square drawn inside it. The square's diagonal runs from its lower-left corner to its upper-right corner, at exactly the slant of (X).

That diagonal carries a solid arrowhead at its upper-right end and a second solid arrowhead at its lower-left end.

So the double-headed arrow sits inside the figure complete and unrotated — option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Option (a)'s line slants down to the right, from its inner rectangle's top-left corner to the bottom-right. (X) rises to the right, and rotation is barred. Its one arrowhead points down-and-right as well.
(b)
Option (b) has the right diagonal, corner to corner across its square, but only one arrowhead, set partway along the line and pointing up to the right. Its lower-left end is a plain corner, so (X)'s second head is missing.
(c)
The diagonal in option (c) is bare — no arrowhead at either end. Its two arrows are separate strokes outside the hexagon, one pointing left and one pointing down.

Concept

An embedded-figure item asks whether the whole of (X) can be traced inside the option — every line and every terminal mark, at the same orientation. When rotation is barred, the slant of each line is a hard test you can apply before looking at anything else.

Terminal marks count as much as lines. An arrowhead, a dot and a bare end are three different things, and this is where the near-miss options are built to differ. Extra lines in an option are never a problem, because (X) only has to be present, not alone.

Options (b), (c) and (d) each carry a line at the slant of (X), and what separates those three is entirely what sits at the ends of it.

Option (a) fails a step earlier: its line slants the other way, so the ends never come into it.

Key facts

Figure (X) is a single straight line with a solid arrowhead at each end, slanting from lower left to upper right.
The instruction bars rotation, so any match has to keep (X) at the same slant.
In option (d) the required arrow is the diagonal of the square drawn inside the octagon.

Study next

Embedded-figure items where rotation is barredEmbedded-figure items where rotation is allowed, and how the method changesComplete-the-figure and paper-folding items that also turn on terminal marks

Common traps

Matching the line and forgetting the arrowheads, which is what makes option (b) tempting.
Mentally rotating an option to make its diagonal fit, when the instruction bars rotation.
Accepting option (b) on a single arrowhead, without checking that the far end of its diagonal carries one too.

SSC prints (X) as a very plain stroke and hides it inside a busier figure, with the near misses differing only at the ends of the line. The same patience with a figure decides the triangle count at Reasoning Q.17 of this shift.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.