SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 15 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.

Select the correct mirror image of the given figure when the mirror is placed at MN.

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The strip reads T f 2 f 5 a 7 with MN drawn as a vertical line to its right.

Rule: a vertical mirror reverses the left-to-right order and flips each character left-to-right. It never turns anything upside down.

So the image must run: a reversed 7, a reversed a, a reversed 5, a reversed f, a reversed 2, a reversed f, then T, which is symmetric and looks unchanged.

Option (b) satisfies both halves at once. Flip it back about a vertical line and you recover T f 2 f 5 a 7 exactly, character for character.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The order is reversed correctly, but the a and one f are printed the normal way round. Flip this strip back and you get a backwards f and a backwards a, not the original.
(c)
The third symbol from the left is a reversed 2 where a reversed 5 belongs — the 5 is missing. A mirror changes orientation, never which characters are present.
(d)
The 7 and one f are turned upside down instead of flipped left-to-right. A mirror standing vertically at MN swaps left and right only; top stays top.

Concept

A mirror at MN acts on the whole strip at once, and two things change together: the order of the characters reverses, and each character is flipped about a vertical axis.

Nothing moves between top and bottom. That single fact eliminates most wrong options, because the usual way to build one is to rotate a character 180 degrees instead of flipping it.

Some characters are unchanged by a vertical flip — T, A, M, O, H, U, V, W, X, Y and the digits 0 and 8 — so they carry no information and the decision rests on the rest.

The strip is set in a plain sans-serif face, so the mirrored forms of f, a, 2 and 5 are all visibly different from the originals. The item can be settled by looking, not by guessing.

Key facts

A vertical mirror reverses left and right, while a horizontal one reverses top and bottom.
T A M O H U V W X Y and the digits 0 and 8 look the same after a vertical flip.
The quickest check is to flip an option back: only the true mirror returns the original strip.

Study next

Water-image questions, where the mirror line is horizontal instead of verticalMirror images of clock faces, where the hour positions reflect as wellPaper folding and punching, which rewards the same left-right reading

Common traps

Reversing the order of the characters but forgetting to flip each one
Rotating a character 180 degrees instead of flipping it left-to-right
Deciding on the symmetric characters, which look identical in every option

SSC prints one alphanumeric strip with the mirror at MN and four near-identical options that differ in one or two glyphs. Another mirror-at-MN item sits in this shift at Reasoning Q.5, and 9 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.10 uses the same set-up.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.