SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 17 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.

The position of how many letters will change if each of the letters in the word ‘CORNFLAKES’ is re-arranged in the English alphabetical order from left to right?

(a)Eight
(b)Seven
(c)Nine
(d)Ten

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Write the word, then its letters in alphabetical order directly underneath.

C O R N F L A K E S
A C E F K L N O R S

Rule: compare the two rows slot by slot and count the slots that differ.

Slot 6 holds L in both rows and slot 10 holds S in both. Every other slot moves: C to A, O to C, R to E, N to F, F to K, A to N, K to O, E to R.

Ten letters with two standing still leaves eight positions changed — option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Seven — Seven is the count you reach by missing one of the movers. The eight that move are C, O, R, N, F, A, K and E, and only L and S hold their slots.
(c)
Nine — Nine assumes a single letter keeps its place. Both L at slot 6 and S at slot 10 survive the sort, so two are fixed, not one.
(d)
Ten — Ten would mean nothing at all holds its place, but L is the 6th letter of CORNFLAKES and also the 6th letter of the sorted string ACEFKLNORS.

Concept

This item asks for a count, and the reliable method is mechanical. Write the word, write its letters in alphabetical order underneath it, then compare column by column.

A letter stays put only when its rank among the word's own letters equals its position in the word. L is the 6th letter of CORNFLAKES and the 6th smallest of its letters, so it does not move, and the same holds for S at slot 10.

Everything else shifts, so the count of changed positions is 10 - 2 = 8.

SSC asks this both ways round: sometimes how many positions change, sometimes how many stay unchanged. Read the stem twice. The sort is identical and the two answers are complements of each other.

Key facts

CORNFLAKES has ten letters, all different, and sorts to ACEFKLNORS.
L occupies slot 6 and S occupies slot 10 in both the word and its sorted form.
Eight of the ten positions change, which is the keyed count.

Study next

Alphabetical-rearrangement counting in both the changed and the unchanged phrasingWriting the alphabet ranks A=1 to Z=26 fluently enough to sort under timeWords with a repeated letter, where identical letters become interchangeable in the sort

Common traps

Answering the count of unchanged letters when the stem asked for the changed ones
Sorting by eye and misplacing K, L and N, which sit close together
Forgetting that a letter can hold its slot by coincidence, as L does here

The unchanged phrasing appears at 24 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.13 with SIGNATURE and at 25 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.2 with DOWNSIZE. The same single sort answers either wording.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.