SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 25 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 25 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.

Study the given diagram carefully and answer the question that follows. The numbers in different sections indicate the number of persons travelling by different modes of transport. How many people travel by bus and car both, but NOT by train?

(a)19
(b)27
(c)17
(d)9

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Translate the words into a single region, then read it off the figure.

Bus and car both, but NOT by train, is the region where the Bus and Car circles overlap and the Train circle does not reach: 9.

The central region, 8, is excluded, because those people travel by train as well.

That leaves 9, which is option (d).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
19 — Option (a) adds a train region back in. 9 + 10 = 19 pulls the bus-and-train overlap into a count that the words NOT by train explicitly exclude.
(b)
27 — 27 is 10 + 9 + 8. Option (b) sums every region inside the Bus circle except bus-only, which sweeps train travellers in rather than removing them.
(c)
17 — 17 is 9 + 8. Option (c) adds the central all-three region to the bus-and-car region — and that central region is exactly the group NOT by train removes.

Concept

The phrase to isolate is NOT by train. It strips the central region out of what would otherwise be the whole Bus-Car overlap.

The Bus and Car circles meet in two regions: the crescent lying outside the Train circle (9) and the central region inside all three (8). "Both, but NOT by train" keeps the first and discards the second.

Had the question asked simply how many travel by bus and car, the answer would be 9 + 8 = 17 — which is why 17 sits in the option list.

NOT is printed in capitals in the stem, and the option list contains the value you get by ignoring it. Read the capitalised word before you read the diagram.

Key facts

The figure prints Bus only as 25, Train only as 35 and Car only as 70.
The pairwise-only regions are Bus-Train 10, Bus-Car 9 and Train-Car 11, with 8 in the centre.
Bus and car but not train is the single region 9, while bus and car including train travellers would be 9 + 8 = 17.

Study next

Venn phrasing that excludes a set: both A and B but not CBuilding a seven-region table from a three-circle diagram before reading any questionQuestions on one diagram that ask for at least one, or exactly two, of the three sets

Common traps

Including the central 8 and answering 17, the value the option list is built to catch.
Summing every region inside the Bus circle that is not bus-only, which gives 27.
Assigning a number to the wrong circle because the labels sit outside the diagram on arrows.

19 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.18 asks the same shape of question — how many students like Hindi and Science both, but NOT Maths — on a subjects diagram. Reasoning Q.20 of this sitting uses the identical stem for a difference between two regions instead of an exclusion.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.