SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 20 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.

In a certain code language, 'EXCESS' is written as '726572121', 'ENERGY' is written as '716720927', how will 'ESCAPE' be written in that language?

(a)72153187
(b)72153165
(c)72151167
(d)71933187

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Test the code on EXCESS. E is the 5th letter and the code opens with 7, which points at alphabet position + 2.

E 5+2 = 7, X 24+2 = 26, C 3+2 = 5, E = 7, S 19+2 = 21, S = 21
Joined without separators: 7-26-5-7-21-21 prints as 726572121, the code given.

ENERGY confirms it: 7, 16, 7, 20, 9, 27 prints as 716720927.

Now ESCAPE. E = 7, S = 21, C = 5, A = 3, P = 18, E = 7.
Joined: 7-21-5-3-18-7 prints as 72153187 — option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
72153165 — Read as 7-21-5-3-16-5, this option gives P the raw 16 and E the raw 5, dropping the +2 shift for the last two letters after applying it to the first four.
(c)
72151167 — This option codes A as 1, its plain position. Under this key A is 1 + 2 = 3, and 3 is what the fourth slot of the ESCAPE code has to carry.
(d)
71933187 — Read as 7-19-3-3-18-7, it leaves S at 19 and C at 3, their plain positions, keeping the +2 shift only for E, A and P.

Concept

Letter-to-number codes at this level are almost always one arithmetic step away from the alphabet position, so fix A = 1 through Z = 26 and then hunt for the step.

Start with the least ambiguous letter. E is 5, and the codes for both EXCESS and ENERGY open with 7, which points straight at +2.

Then verify on the second word before using the rule. The code is a concatenation, not a number, so agreement in the first two digits proves very little. Once ENERGY checks out, ESCAPE is arithmetic.

Because the digits run together with nothing marking the joins, a two-digit position such as 21 sits flush against a one-digit position such as 5. Build your string forwards from the rule rather than trying to split an option backwards into letters.

Key facts

In this code each letter is written as its alphabet position plus 2, and the results are simply joined.
EXCESS becomes 7-26-5-7-21-21, which prints as 726572121.
ENERGY becomes 7-16-7-20-9-27, which prints as 716720927.
ESCAPE becomes 7-21-5-3-18-7, which prints as 72153187.

Study next

Alphabet-position codes with a constant added to or subtracted from every letterOpposite-letter codes, where each letter is replaced by 27 minus its positionCodes that reverse the word before converting the letters to numbers

Common traps

Shifting the easy letters and forgetting A, which becomes 3 rather than 1
Splitting the given code into digits before knowing which letters are two-digit
Checking the rule on the first word only and never on the second

The same family runs with different arithmetic. At 19 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.2, CYCLE is coded 242241522 by using 27 minus each position, and at 12 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.7, MUTUAL is coded 12121202113 by reversing the word first and then writing plain positions.

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