SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 18 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 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.

Identify the figure from among the given options which when put in place of the question mark (?) will logically complete the series.

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Every box holds two things: a large character at the bottom right and a small one at the top left.

Rule: the large character of one box returns as the small character of the next box, reflected left-to-right.

Box 1's large P comes back in box 2 as a reversed P, which reads like a q. Box 2's large 6 comes back in box 3 reversed. Box 3's slanted Z comes back in box 4 as a reversed Z.

So the fifth box must carry a reversed C at the top left, opening to the left instead of the right, with its large letter left the normal way round. That is option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Its small letter is an ordinary C, facing the same way as the C in box 4. The rule reflects the character, so an unreversed C is the one thing it cannot be.
(b)
Another C that has not been reversed, merely set in a lighter, slanted face. A change of typeface is not a reflection.
(c)
Its small character is a 9, which is not box 4's C in any orientation, and its large letter is a backwards D — the reflection has been applied to the wrong character.

Concept

A picture series is a chain, not four unrelated boxes: something in one box reappears in the next, changed by a single fixed rule.

Here the carried object is the large character and the change is a reflection in a vertical line. Such a reflection swaps left and right and leaves top and bottom alone — unlike a 180-degree turn, which reverses both.

Test any candidate by turning it back: if reversing the small character does not reproduce the previous box's large one, that option is out.

Box 1's small character has no earlier box to come from, so the rule can only be read off boxes 2, 3 and 4. The large letter of the missing box is not fixed by the rule either — three of the four options show a D that has not been reversed, and the small character is what decides between them.

Key facts

A reflection in a vertical line swaps left and right and leaves top and bottom unchanged.
In this series each box's large character reappears as the next box's small character, reversed.
A reversed C opens to the left, while an ordinary C opens to the right.
A reversed capital P has the shape of a lowercase q, which is why box 2's small mark reads as one.

Study next

Reflection in a vertical line set against rotation by 180 degreesCharacters that look unchanged in a vertical mirror, such as A, H, I, M, O, T, U, V, W, X and YPicture series where the carried element changes position rather than orientation

Common traps

Reading the small character as a transform of the large one in the same box
Accepting a differently styled C as a reversed C, when only the typeface has changed

SSC tucks the carried character into a corner at a size small enough that its orientation is easy to miss, then offers two options that differ only in which way it faces. The same instruction runs at 09 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.14 and at 12 Sep 2024, 12:30, Reasoning Q.17.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.