SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 1 · English Comprehension · Question 11 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.

Given below are four jumbled sentences. Select the option that gives their correct logical sequence. A. The world’s biggest radio telescope is in Puerto Rico. B. It is called Arecibo dish. C. It was built 40 years ago. D. It is also 300 metres across.

(a)ABDC
(b)DCAB
(c)CBDA
(d)DCBA

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Rule: the opening sentence must supply the noun every later pronoun points back to.

B, C and D all begin with It. Only A carries the full noun phrase, the world's biggest radio telescope, so A has to come first — and ABDC is the sequence that begins with A → option (a).

The rest follows the sense: B names it (Arecibo dish), D adds a further present-tense measurement with also, and C closes with the past-tense fact about when it was built.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
DCAB — DCAB opens on D, It is also 300 metres across. Both the pronoun and the word also need something before them, and here there is nothing.
(c)
CBDA — CBDA opens on C, It was built 40 years ago, and pushes A to the end — so the telescope is named after three sentences have already discussed it.
(d)
DCBA — DCBA has the same impossible opener as (b) and also buries A last, leaving every It in the paragraph without an antecedent until the final line.

Concept

Jumbled-sentence items are decided by cohesion markers, not by which order sounds more interesting.

The strongest marker is the pronoun. A sentence beginning with a bare It, He, They or This cannot open the set, because the reader has nothing to attach it to.

The second marker is the additive word. Also, too, moreover and as well all announce that a comparable fact has already been given, so their sentence follows that fact rather than starting the paragraph.

Order these on their grammar, not on what you know about the telescope. Nothing in the task asks whether the size or the age in the sentences is accurate.

Key facts

A sentence opening with a bare pronoun cannot be the first sentence of a jumbled set.
Also signals an addition, so its sentence must follow the fact it is adding to.
When only one option starts with the sentence that carries the full noun phrase, the answer is settled without reading the rest of the sequence.

Study next

Finding the opening sentence by antecedent and by article (a telescope before the telescope)Connectors as position markers: also, however, therefore, meanwhileRearranging labelled segments into a single sentence rather than a paragraph

Common traps

Starting with C because building something comes first in real time.
Assuming a jumbled set must run in chronological order.
Reading all four sequences in full when the first letter already eliminates three.

SSC gives four labelled sentences and four orderings, and the eliminations usually run faster from the option letters than from the sentences.

Rearrangement also appears at English Q.13 of this 26 Sep 2024, 9:00 am sitting, where five labelled segments have to be built into one sentence.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.