SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 10 of 100

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.

Each of the letters in the word ‘KEYBOARD’ are arranged in the English alphabetical order. How many letters are in the English alphabetical order between the letter which is the third from the right end and the second from the right end in the group of letters thus formed?

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

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Sort the letters, then index from the end the question names.

KEYBOARD in alphabetical order: A B D E K O R Y

Counting from the right end: Y is first, R is second, O is third.
So the two letters wanted are O (third from the right) and R (second from the right).

Rule: 'between' excludes both named letters.

Between O and R in the alphabet lie P and Q — two letters -> option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Four — Four is the inclusive count: O, P, Q, R. 'Between' leaves out the two named letters, so only P and Q are counted.
(b)
Three — Three is the gap between K and O, which are the fourth and third letters from the right. Counting from the right, Y is first, R is second and O is third.
(c)
One — One is the answer when you count from the left end: third from the left is D and second from the left is B, with only C between them.

Concept

The question is two instructions welded together, and the marks are lost on the second.

Rearranging KEYBOARD alphabetically is the easy half. Indexing from a stated end and then counting between two letters is the half that goes wrong.

'Between' excludes both endpoints, so O and R are not counted — P and Q are. Read the direction twice as well: 'third from the right end' is not 'third letter', and in an eight-letter string those are different letters.

KEYBOARD has eight distinct letters, so nothing has to be dropped as a duplicate before sorting.

Key facts

KEYBOARD sorted alphabetically is A B D E K O R Y.
Read from the right, that string runs Y, R, O, K, E, D, B, A.
P and Q are the letters lying between O and R, so the count is two.

Study next

Alphabetical rearrangement items that then index from a named endCounting letters between two letters without including either of themPositions from the right versus positions from the left in the same string

Common traps

Counting from the left when the question says 'from the right end'.
Including the two named letters, which turns two into four.
Sorting the word and then indexing the original spelling by mistake.

Write the sorted string once, then write the right-to-left index above it. Both halves of the question are then read off rather than recomputed.

Alphabet positions also drive Reasoning Q.1 and Q.11 in this shift (19 Sep 2024, 09:00).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.