SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 22 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.

BIRTHDAY - IBTRDHYA BLAZER - LBZARE REMOVE - ? Using the same logic as applied for the first two pairs of terms, select the term that can replace the question mark (?) in the third pair.

(a)EROMEV
(b)ERMOVE
(c)EROMVE
(d)EVOMER

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Check the letters first: IBTRDHYA uses exactly the letters of BIRTHDAY, so nothing is substituted and the operation is purely positional.

Rule: split the word into blocks of two from the left and swap the letters inside every block — 1 with 2, 3 with 4, 5 with 6, and so on.

BIRTHDAY → BI RT HD AY → IB TR DH YA = IBTRDHYA
BLAZER → BL AZ ER → LB ZA RE = LBZARE
REMOVE → RE MO VE → ER OM EV = EROMEV → option (a)

No letter leaves its own block, which is why REMOVE comes back as three swapped pairs.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
ERMOVE — ERMOVE swaps only the first block. MO and VE are left exactly as the word prints them, so the rule has been abandoned after two letters.
(c)
EROMVE — EROMVE swaps the first two blocks but leaves the last block VE untouched. Every block gets the same treatment, the final one included.
(d)
EVOMER — EVOMER is REMOVE written backwards, a whole-word reversal. That operation would have turned BIRTHDAY into YADHTRIB, not IBTRDHYA.

Concept

Word-transformation items ask for an operation that moves letters between positions without changing which letters are present. So check the letter set first: if the output is an anagram of the input, the rule is positional and no shift is involved.

Then look for the smallest repeating unit. BIRTHDAY and IBTRDHYA agree letter for letter and the first two have traded places, which suggests pairs. Six-letter BLAZER confirms the same pairing, so REMOVE gets it too.

Pair-swapping only works cleanly on words of even length, and all three words here have an even letter count. An odd-length word would leave a letter with no partner.

Key facts

IBTRDHYA is an anagram of BIRTHDAY, so no letter has been substituted.
REMOVE splits as RE, MO, VE and becomes ER, OM, EV.
A whole-word reversal of REMOVE would give EVOMER, which is a different operation.

Study next

Word codes that reverse only part of a wordCodes combining a positional move with an alphabetical shiftLetter series completion, tested in this shift at Reasoning Q.13

Common traps

Swapping the first pair and assuming the remaining letters look after themselves
Reading the change as a full reversal because the opening letters look reversed

SSC prints two solved word pairs and asks for the third, and the operation is positional rather than alphabetical. Positional letter work also runs in this shift at Reasoning Q.13, which asks you to fill blanks in a repeating letter series.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.