SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 23 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 14 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 — C. Rule: a mirror at the vertical line MN reverses left and right — the character nearest the mirror leads, and every character is itself flipped side-to-side.

The string is H f 2 q 6 r 3 and MN stands to its right, so the image reads 3, r, 6, q, 2, f, H with each glyph turned over: q becomes p, 6 becomes a backwards 6, and H is unchanged because it is symmetric about a vertical axis.

The quick test: hold each option up to a mirror. Only option (c) comes back reading Hf2q6r3 exactly.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Its 6 is printed as a 9 and its q as a b. Those are the shapes a glyph takes when it is turned upside-down, so option (a) is the whole string rotated 180 degrees rather than reflected side-to-side.
(b)
Its q is left as a q, where a lateral mirror turns q into p. Hold option (b) up to a mirror and that character comes back as a p where the stem prints a q, so the string never restores.
(d)
It reverses the order but leaves the f and the 2 the normal way round, and prints the 6 as a 9. A mirror flips every glyph, not a selection of them.

Concept

A lateral mirror does two things at once, and most wrong answers drop one of them.

First the sequence reverses: whatever sits nearest MN comes out nearest MN in the image, so a string with the mirror on its right is read from the right.

Second, each character is flipped about a vertical axis. Shapes with a vertical axis of symmetry survive unchanged — A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X, Y among capitals and 0 and 8 among the digits — while q becomes p, d becomes b and R becomes a reversed R.

Nothing is ever flipped top to bottom. That is a water image, a different question.

Every option here starts and ends with the same shapes, so the decision is made in the middle of the string.

Check the two asymmetric characters, q and 6, before anything else.

Key facts

A mirror at a vertical line reverses the order of the characters and flips each one about a vertical axis.
Capital A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X and Y look unchanged in a vertical mirror.
Among digits, 0 and 8 look unchanged in a vertical mirror.
A vertical mirror turns q into p, whereas turning q upside-down gives b.

Study next

Water images, where the fold line is horizontal and characters flip top to bottomMirror images of clock times, worked as 11:60 minus the given timeWhich capital letters and digits survive a vertical mirror unchanged

Common traps

Reversing the order of the characters and forgetting to flip each one
Turning a character upside-down instead of sideways, so 6 becomes 9
Assuming the mirror is on the left when the paper draws MN on the right

SSC prints a short character string beside the line MN and asks for the mirror image — letters mixed with digits, or letters alone. The same stem is used at Reasoning Q.18 here, and at 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.10 (yTfr93n) and Reasoning Q.13 (bcFgI, letters only).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Space Visualization — all 88 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.