SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 19 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 17 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.

In a certain code language, ‘toys are gadgets’ is coded as ‘dj sq ty’ and ‘gadgets are machines’ is coded as ‘mp ty dj’. What is code for ‘gadgets’ in that language?

(a)either ‘ty’ or ‘mp’
(b)either ‘ty’ or ‘dj’
(c)sq
(d)dj

Answer

Why

Correct — B. Rule: line the two sentences up and keep only what they share.

'toys are gadgets' = 'dj sq ty'
'gadgets are machines' = 'mp ty dj'

The words common to both are are and gadgets; the codes common to both are ty and dj. So those codes stand for those words.

The odd pieces settle the rest — 'toys' = 'sq' and 'machines' = 'mp' — but nothing here separates 'are' from 'gadgets'.

So 'gadgets' is either 'ty' or 'dj', which is option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
either ‘ty’ or ‘mp’ — 'mp' appears only in the second sentence, so it codes machines, the word unique to that sentence. It cannot be a candidate for 'gadgets'.
(c)
sq — 'sq' appears only in the first sentence, so it codes toys. It is the code the data pins down exactly, and not to 'gadgets'.
(d)
dj — Naming 'dj' alone claims a certainty the data does not give: 'ty' fits equally well, because 'are' and 'gadgets' both occur in both sentences.

Concept

Word-code items are solved by intersection, not by position. Set the sentences side by side, find the words common to both and the codes common to both, and those two sets correspond.

The codes are scrambled within each sentence, so where a code sits tells you nothing about which word it belongs to.

When two words are shared, two codes are shared, and no third sentence exists to separate them, the honest answer is a pair of possibilities — which is why 'either ... or' options exist in this format.

The item is testing whether you will accept an undetermined answer. A single code looks more decisive and is the natural wrong pick.

Key facts

A word appearing in only one sentence is pinned by the code appearing only in that sentence, which gives 'toys' = 'sq'.
Two sentences can never separate two words that both appear in both of them.
An 'either ... or' option can be the intended answer when the data leaves two codes interchangeable.

Study next

Three-sentence word codes, where the extra line isolates one wordSubstitution codes in which symbols replace whole words rather than lettersLetter-shift codes, a different family, as at Reasoning Q.12 of this shift

Common traps

Assuming the codes follow the word order of the sentence.
Picking the single code 'dj' because it looks decisive, when the data cannot separate it from 'ty'.
Forgetting that 'are' is common to both sentences too, and so competes for the same pair of codes.

Reasoning Q.1 of this shift gives three sentences of the same kind, and there the extra line does separate the shared words. Two sentences, as here, deliberately cannot.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.