SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 16 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 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) Scissors : Paper

(a)Heater : Plastic
(b)Furnace : Water
(c)Axe : Wood
(d)Mines : Diamond

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Rule: the first word is the bladed tool, the second is the material that tool is used to cut.

Scissors cut paper. An axe cuts wood. Both pairs run tool → the thing the tool is used on, and in both the tool works by a blade.

No other pair here puts a cutting implement beside what it cuts, so option (c) is the match.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Heater : Plastic — A heater warms or melts; it is not a cutting tool, and plastic is not the material a heater is built to act on.
(b)
Furnace : Water — A furnace burns fuel to produce heat. Water is not what a furnace is used to cut or process, so the relation breaks.
(d)
Mines : Diamond — A mine is a place diamonds are extracted from, not a tool that cuts them. That relation is source → product.

Concept

Word-pair analogies are settled by naming the relation in a full sentence before you look at the options.

Say it out loud: Scissors are the tool used to cut paper. Then feed each option into that same sentence.

An axe is the tool used to cut wood survives. A mine is the tool used to cut a diamond does not. The sentence test decides the item without any guessing.

The question prints its own rider: the words are meaningful English words and must not be matched on the number of letters, consonants or vowels. So the link has to be a real-world one, not an alphabet trick.

Key facts

Scissors and an axe are both bladed cutting tools.
A diamond is mined rather than cut by a mine, which makes it a source and not a tool.
The printed rider bars matching on number of letters, consonants or vowels.

Study next

Tool-and-material analogies such as knife : bread and saw : timberSeparating source-product pairs from tool-object pairsStating the relation as a sentence before testing the four options

Common traps

Choosing Mines : Diamond because both pairs involve something hard
Accepting Heater : Plastic on the loose idea that a heater acts on plastic
Hunting for a letter-count link that the rider has already ruled out

The same word-pair wrapper carries a different relation from one item to the next — opposites at Reasoning Q.10 of this shift (Cessation : Beginning).

SSC sets the same kind of relation in a three-word frame too, handing you a worked pair and a third word: Q.19 of this shift is Pig : Piglets :: Deer : ?, and 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.22 is Botany : Plants :: Conchology : ?.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.