SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 24 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 22 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.

Select the option that is related to the third word in the same way as the second word is related to the first word. (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) Botany : Plants : : Conchology : ?

(a)Fossils
(b)Names
(c)Shells
(d)Soil

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Name the relation before looking at the choices: a science and the thing it studies. Botany studies plants.

Conchology is the study of shells — the shells of molluscs, collected, described and classified.

The word carries its own evidence. The stem is the one in conch, the large spiral shell, and -logy marks a branch of study.

Carry the relation across and the fourth term has to be shells → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
Fossils — Fossils are the subject of palaeontology. Conchology deals with shells as objects in themselves, not with remains preserved in rock.
(b)
Names — Names are the subject of onomastics. The stem conch- points at a shell, and nothing in the word points at words.
(d)
Soil — Soil is the subject of pedology, within soil science. Shells and soil share nothing but a vaguely natural-history feel.

Concept

Word analogies give you a relation, not a topic. State the relation in a short sentence first — here, X is the study of Y — and only then read the options.

Do it in that order and the options cannot steer you. All four here are plausible subjects for some science, so any of them looks reasonable until the relation is fixed.

When the term is unfamiliar, break it into its parts. -logy marks a field of study and the stem names the subject, which is enough to place conchology without ever having met the word.

SSC prints a rider on these items — the words must be meaningful English words and must not be related by the number of letters, consonants or vowels — which closes off letter-counting answers before you start.

Key facts

Conchology is the study of shells, in particular the shells of molluscs.
Botany is the study of plants.
Palaeontology is the study of fossils.
The suffix -logy marks a branch of study, and the stem in front of it names what is studied.

Study next

Common -logy fields: entomology, ornithology, ichthyology, herpetologyAnalogies built on worker-and-tool or product-and-source rather than science-and-subjectReading an unfamiliar term through its root before guessing at it

Common traps

Choosing fossils because shells and fossils are both hard natural remains
Picking an option before the relation has been named, which lets any plausible pair win

The relation is never stated, only demonstrated by the first pair, so name it in words before you read the options.

The same instruction runs at 24 Sep 2024, 12:30, Reasoning Q.19 (Pig : Piglets :: Deer : ?) and at 13 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.2 (Magician : Magic :: Dancer : ?).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.