SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 4 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 10 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 word pair that best represents a similar relationship to the one expressed in the pair of words given below. (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) Control : Domination

(a)Descend : Fall
(b)Manipulation : Deceive
(c)Creation : Destruction
(d)Liberation : Slavery

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Rule: the second word names what the first is practised in order to bring about. You exercise control in order to reach domination.

Manipulation : Deceive runs the same way round: manipulation is the method, deceiving is what it is used to achieve.

The other three pairs do not. Descend and Fall are two names for the same downward movement, and Creation : Destruction and Liberation : Slavery are pairs of opposites.

So the matching pair is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Descend : Fall — Descend and Fall both describe moving downward — a same-meaning pair, with no method and no purpose to tell apart.
(c)
Creation : Destruction — Creation and Destruction are opposites: one undoes the other. The given pair points in a single direction, from a method to its aim.
(d)
Liberation : Slavery — Liberation and Slavery are opposites as well, two contrary states rather than an act and the end it serves.

Concept

Name the relation in a sentence before you look at the options. "Control is exercised in order to achieve domination" is a sentence you can then test on each pair, and only one pair survives it.

The four options are deliberately of three different kinds — one same-meaning pair, two opposite pairs, and one method-and-aim pair. Sorting them by kind is faster than judging each on feel.

The bracketed rider blocks the shortcut of counting letters, vowels or consonants, so the answer has to come from meaning.

Control and domination sit close enough in meaning that option (a), a plain same-meaning pair, is a real temptation. The reading the key follows is directional — the first word is the method and the second is what it is aimed at — and Manipulation : Deceive is the pair that carries that direction.

Key facts

Two of the four options, Creation : Destruction and Liberation : Slavery, are opposite pairs and can be struck out together.
Descend and Fall both name downward movement, which is sameness rather than purpose.
The bracketed rider bars answering from letter, vowel or consonant counts.

Study next

Telling a same-meaning pair from a method-and-aim pair in word analogiesWord pairs built on deficiency and disease, as at 11 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.5Pairs where the second word is a stronger degree of the first

Common traps

Choosing the first pair that feels related instead of naming the relation first
Picking an opposite pair because the given words sound like a contrast
Counting letters or vowels, which the question's own rider rules out

SSC never states the relation — it has to be read out of the example. The same instruction and the same bracketed rider appear at 10 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.12 (Presence : Abundance) and at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.12 (Love : Harmony).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.