SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 5 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 as shown below.

Answer

Why

Correct — D. MN is a vertical mirror standing at the right-hand end of the string G/k2wa.

Rule: a vertical mirror reverses the order of the characters and reverses each character in itself.

Order flips: the 'a' nearest MN comes first, then w, then 2, then k, then the stroke, then G.
Each glyph flips: '/' becomes '\', and a, 2, k and G all face the other way.
'w' is symmetrical about a vertical axis, so it comes through unchanged.

Option (d) reads: reversed a, w, reversed 2, reversed k, backslash, reversed G. Hold it up to a mirror and you get G/k2wa back.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Option (a) reverses the order but leaves k and 2 facing their original way, and turns the a and the w upside down instead of sideways. That is a water image spliced into a mirror image.
(b)
Option (b) has the order right and the middle glyphs right, but the outer a and G stand unreversed. In a mirror no character keeps its own orientation unless it is symmetrical about the vertical axis.
(c)
Option (c) opens w before a, but 'a' stood nearest MN and must appear first in the image. Its 'a' is unreversed as well.

Concept

A mirror standing vertically does two things at once, and candidates usually remember only one.

It reverses the order of the characters, so whatever stood nearest the mirror ends up first in the image. It also reverses each character in itself, so k, 2, a and G all face the other way.

A character symmetrical about a vertical axis — w here — comes through looking untouched. That makes it a useful anchor: if an option has changed the w, it is wrong for a different reason.

A water image, where the mirror lies horizontally below the line, does the opposite: it keeps the left-to-right order and turns each character upside down. Option (a) mixes the two.

Key facts

A vertical mirror reverses left-to-right order, so the character nearest the mirror appears first in the image.
Characters symmetrical about a vertical axis look unchanged, among them w, A, H, M, O, T, U, V, W, X and Y.
The stroke '/' becomes '\' in a vertical mirror.
The mirror image of G/k2wa reads, left to right, as a reversed a, w, reversed 2, reversed k, backslash, reversed G.

Study next

Water images, where the mirror lies horizontally below the stringWhich letters and digits are symmetrical about a vertical axisMirror images taken in a diagonal mirror line

Common traps

Reversing the order of the characters but drawing each one unchanged.
Reversing each character but keeping the original left-to-right order.
Rejecting the right option because its w looks the same as the original.

The string mixes a capital, lowercase letters, a digit and a punctuation stroke on purpose, so no single memorised shape rule covers it.

This shift reads figures again at Reasoning Q.3 and Q.6 (19 Sep 2024, 09:00), there as series rather than reflections.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.