SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 18 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 6 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.

The position of how many letters will remain unchanged if each of the letter in the word ‘HUSBAND’ is arranged in English alphabetical order?

(a)Three
(b)Zero
(c)Two
(d)One

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Rule: write the word, write its letters in alphabetical order underneath, then compare place by place.

HUSBAND sorted alphabetically is A, B, D, H, N, S, U. Set the two rows against each other:

H U S B A N D
A B D H N S U

Place 1: H against A. Place 2: U against B.
Place 3: S against D. Place 4: B against H.
Place 5: A against N. Place 6: N against S.
Place 7: D against U.

Not one place holds the same letter, so the count is zero — option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Three — Three would need three letters to land on their own places. Checked column by column, H, U, S, B, A, N and D all move.
(c)
Two — Two would need two columns to match. The near misses are S, at place 3 in HUSBAND and place 6 after sorting, and N, at place 6 and place 5 — close, but neither holds its place.
(d)
One — One usually comes from checking the middle letter alone. HUSBAND's 4th letter is B while the sorted 4th is H, so even that place changes.

Concept

The question counts places, not letters. Sorting rearranges the same seven letters, so of course every letter is still present — what is being asked is how many of them do not move.

Write the two rows one above the other and read straight down the columns. Doing this in your head is where the count goes wrong, because the eye matches letters instead of positions.

Zero is a legitimate answer here and SSC offers it as an option. Candidates who distrust it talk themselves into One or Two.

HUSBAND has seven letters and no repeats, so there is no ambiguity about which copy of a letter to compare — the comparison is a clean column-by-column read.

Key facts

HUSBAND in alphabetical order is A, B, D, H, N, S, U.
A letter that appears in both rows at different places does not count.
Zero appears among the four options, so it is a live answer and not a trap.

Study next

Sorting a seven- or eight-letter word alphabetically at speedThe variant asking how many letters change place rather than stayWords with a repeated letter, where the sorted row must keep both copies

Common traps

Counting letters common to both rows instead of letters that keep their place
Sorting the first few letters and guessing the tail
Rejecting Zero because it feels like too neat an answer

The same stem runs with a different word and with the wording nudged about — JANITOR at 9 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.12 word for word, SIGHTED at 13 Sep 2024, 12:30, Reasoning Q.12 with 'each of the letters', and MENTOR at 18 Sep 2024, 9:00, Reasoning Q.1 with 'all the letters'.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.