A paper is folded and cut as shown below. How will it appear when unfolded?

Correct — A. Undo the folds in reverse, mirroring every cut as you go.

Rule: two folds mean each punch reappears 2² = 4 times, once mirrored across each fold line.

The right half folds onto the left, then the top half folds down, leaving the bottom-left quarter. That quarter holds a square at its upper-right corner and an oval at its lower-left.

The quarter's upper-right corner is the centre of the whole sheet, so the square opens into a 2×2 cluster round the middle. Its lower-left corner is a corner of the sheet, so the oval opens into all four corners — option (a).

Why the others are wrong

• (b)
  The oval positions are right, the square count is wrong. Option (b) shows one large square at the centre where two folds must produce four separate square holes.
• (c)
  Both cuts are wrong here. Option (c) keeps a single central square instead of four, and pulls the ovals in from the corners, where the punch actually sat against the sheet edge.
• (d)
  The square cluster is right, the ovals are misplaced. Option (d) gathers all four ovals near the vertical centre line, but the punched oval lay at the quarter's outer corner, so its images belong at the sheet corners.

Paper folding is bookkeeping, not visual imagination. Each fold doubles the number of holes, so n folds turn one punch into 2ⁿ holes — here two folds give four.

Position is settled by mirroring. Undo the last fold first and reflect every hole across that fold line, then undo the fold before it and reflect again.

The one thing worth memorising: a punch near the free edge of the folded packet lands near the outside of the opened sheet, while a punch near the fold line lands near the middle.

Key facts

• Two folds turn each punch into 2² = 4 holes on the opened sheet.
• A punch beside a fold line opens into a pair straddling that line, which is why the four squares sit as a tight 2×2 block round the centre.
• A punch at the outer corner of the folded quarter opens into one hole at each of the four sheet corners.

Common traps

• Counting four squares and four ovals and stopping there, when a wrong option carries exactly those counts in the wrong places.
• Unfolding in the order the folds were made instead of reversing it.
• Reading the dashed outline as part of the paper rather than as the sheet's original extent.

No directly related past PYQ was found.