SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 14 of 99

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 6 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 word-pair that best represents a similar relationship to the one expressed in the pair of words given below. (The words must be considered as meaningful English words and must NOT be related to each other based on the number of letters/number of consonants/vowels in the word) New Zealand : Wellington

(a)South Korea : Suwon Si
(b)China : Hong Kong
(c)Egypt : Tunis
(d)Ethiopia : Addis Ababa

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Rule: country : its national capital.

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, so the second word of the pair must be the first country's seat of government.

Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia, which is that relation exactly, so option (d) is the matching pair.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
South Korea : Suwon Si — Suwon is a South Korean city, but the country's capital is Seoul. Being a large or well-known city does not make a place the capital.
(b)
China : Hong Kong — Hong Kong is a Special Administrative Region of China, not its capital. China's capital is Beijing.
(c)
Egypt : Tunis — Tunis is the capital of Tunisia, not of Egypt. Egypt's capital is Cairo, so this pair crosses two different countries.

Concept

A word-pair analogy gives you one pair and asks for the option built on the same link. Name the link in words before you look at the options — here, capital city of the country.

The bracketed rider tells you to read the words as meaningful English words, so letter counts and vowel counts are ruled out as the link.

Once the link is named, each option becomes a yes-or-no check against a fact rather than a judgement call.

Three of the four options name a real, well-known city, so recognition alone will not separate them. Only the country each city actually governs does.

Key facts

Wellington is the capital of New Zealand, while its largest city is Auckland.
Addis Ababa is the capital of Ethiopia.
Seoul, not Suwon, is the capital of South Korea.
Tunis is the capital of Tunisia, which is why pairing it with Egypt fails.

Study next

Capital cities of Africa, starting with Addis Ababa, Cairo and NairobiCountries whose largest city is not the capital, such as New Zealand, Australia and TurkeySpecial administrative regions of China: Hong Kong and Macau

Common traps

Reading the best-known city as the capital, which sends candidates to Hong Kong for China.
Matching a capital to the wrong country, as with Tunis and Egypt.
Hunting for a letter-count or vowel-count link that the bracketed note has already ruled out.

The stem hands you one pair plus a rider that blocks letter-count readings, so the link is semantic — here a country and its seat of government. The same analogy frame appears with numbers at Reasoning Q.18 and Q.22 of this shift, where the link is arithmetic instead.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.