SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 7 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.

The question contains pairs of words that are related to each other in a certain way. Three of the following four word pairs are alike as these have the same relationship and thus form a group. Which word pair is the one that DOES NOT belong to that group? (The words must be considered as meaningful English words and must not be related to each other based on the number of letters/number of consonants/vowels in the word.)

(a)Loud - noisy
(b)Honest - truthful
(c)Tired - exhausted
(d)Close - open

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Rule: three pairs are synonyms, and the odd pair is a pair of opposites.

Loud and noisy describe the same quality of sound.
Honest and truthful describe the same quality of character.
Tired and exhausted describe the same state, exhausted being the stronger word.

Close and open are antonyms — one shuts, the other opens — so option (d) is the pair that does not belong to the group.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Loud - noisy — Loud and noisy are synonyms, both describing sound at high volume, so this pair sits inside the group of three and cannot be the misfit.
(b)
Honest - truthful — Honest and truthful are synonyms for someone who does not lie. The pair belongs with the group rather than outside it.
(c)
Tired - exhausted — Tired and exhausted differ only in degree, exhausted being the extreme of tired. A difference of intensity is not an opposition.

Concept

Odd-one-out among word pairs asks you to name the relation inside each pair, then find the pair whose relation is different.

Here three pairs are synonym pairs and one is an antonym pair. The relation decides, not the subject matter — sound, character and tiredness have nothing in common, and that does not matter.

The bracketed rider rules out letter counts and consonant or vowel counts, so the link you find has to be a matter of meaning.

Tired and exhausted are not exact equivalents — exhausted is the stronger word. A difference of degree still sits on the synonym side of the line, and the antonym pair is unmistakable, so the item is not genuinely ambiguous.

Key facts

Synonyms share a meaning while antonyms oppose one.
Close and open are direct opposites when read as verbs.
Exhausted is an intensified form of tired, not its opposite.

Study next

Synonym and antonym pairs in the odd-one-out formatCategory relations such as part-to-whole and worker-to-toolDegree families such as warm, hot and scalding

Common traps

Picking Tired - exhausted because the two words are not exact equivalents.
Hunting for a letter-count or vowel-count pattern the rider has already barred.
Reading close as the adjective meaning near, which destroys the opposition.

The same instruction runs at 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.6, where the shared relation is polygon-to-side-count and Hexagon - 8 sides is the misfit, and at 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.9, where it is organ-to-specialist and Uterus - urologist is the misfit.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.