SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 26 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 15 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.

Identify the figure given in the options which when put in place of ? will logically complete the series.

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Rule: one more corner letter becomes its own mirror image at each step, in clockwise order starting from the top-right.

Frame 1 shows J, L, N and R all upright.
Frame 2 flips the top-right L.
Frame 3 adds the bottom-right R, which becomes a reversed R.
Frame 4 adds the bottom-left N, which becomes a reversed N.

Frame 5 must therefore add the last corner, the top-left J, and nothing that has already flipped may turn back.

All four letters stand mirrored — a reversed J, a reversed L, a reversed N and a reversed R — which is option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
The bottom-right corner of (a) shows an upright R. That corner turned into a reversed R back at frame 3, and in this series a letter that has flipped never un-flips.
(b)
(b) puts the bottom-left N back upright, though that corner flipped at frame 4. Its other three corners are right, which is exactly what makes it the most tempting wrong answer.
(d)
Both top letters in (d) are upright, so the top-right L has reverted. What (d) actually draws is frame 4's state with the top-right undone, not frame 5.

Concept

A figure series built from letters is still a transformation series: something happens between one frame and the next, and the same something happens again.

Here the transformation is a reflection, and what grows is how much of the frame it has reached. One extra corner joins the mirrored set each step.

The travelling order is part of the pattern too. Top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left, top-left is a clockwise walk, so the last frame is simply the walk completed.

Reversed N and reversed R happen to look like the Cyrillic letters I and YA, which is a useful visual handle but no part of the logic. All the question is doing is reflecting each glyph left to right.

Key facts

A cumulative series adds one change per step and never undoes an earlier one.
J, L, N and R are all asymmetric, so a left-right mirror visibly changes every one of them.
The corners here flip clockwise, beginning at the top-right.
Frame 5 of a four-element cumulative series has every element transformed.

Study next

Cumulative figure series where a shape is added rather than reflected each stepRotation series, where each frame turns 45 or 90 degrees and nothing accumulatesMirror image of letter strings, the single-step version of this transformation

Common traps

Reading the flip as a rotation, which for J and L gives a different glyph
Assuming the fifth frame just repeats the fourth because all corners look busy
Losing track of which corner is due next and flipping two at once

SSC prints these as four boxed frames and a question mark, with the change usually cumulative rather than cyclic.

A figure series also runs at Reasoning Q.10 of this same 26 Sep 2024, 09:00 paper, and again 10 Sep 2024, 12:30, Reasoning Q.11 and 11 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.5.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.