SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · 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 6 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.

Select the option that is related to the fifth letter-cluster in the same way as the second letter-cluster is related to the first letter-cluster and the fourth letter-cluster is related to the third letter-cluster. MEK: NVP :: GYT: TBG :: JWH:?

(a)QDS
(b)PCR
(c)QDT
(d)PCS

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Every letter is replaced by its opposite letter in the alphabet, the pair of positions always summing to 27 (A with Z, B with Y, and so on).

M(13) → N(14), E(5) → V(22), K(11) → P(16), so MEK → NVP ✓
G(7) → T(20), Y(25) → B(2), T(20) → G(7), so GYT → TBG ✓

Apply it to the fifth cluster:
J(10) → Q(17), W(23) → D(4), H(8) → S(19)

JWH → QDS → option (a)

Why the others are wrong

(b)
PCR — PCR is QDS moved back one letter at every place. The opposite-letter rule fixes each letter by position, so J must give Q, not P.
(c)
QDT — QDT has the last letter wrong. H is the 8th letter and 27 − 8 = 19, which is S, not T.
(d)
PCS — PCS gets only the third letter right. J's opposite is Q rather than P, and W's is D rather than C.

Concept

Letter-cluster analogies are decided by position numbers, so write them down before guessing at a pattern.

Check a constant shift first, because it is the commonest rule. Here M → N looks like +1, but E → V is +17, so the shift is dead and something position-based is at work.

The opposite-letter rule is the next candidate: the letter at position p maps to the letter at position 27 − p. Confirm it on both given pairs before applying it to the fifth cluster.

The rule is its own inverse: applying it twice returns the original cluster. That is a quick way to check your answer, since QDS mapped again gives JWH.

Key facts

Opposite letters sum to 27: A with Z, B with Y, M with N.
The EJOTY marks — E is 5, J is 10, O is 15, T is 20, Y is 25 — give positions quickly.
MEK maps to NVP and GYT maps to TBG under the same single rule.
J, W and H sit at positions 10, 23 and 8, whose opposites are 17, 4 and 19.

Study next

Opposite-letter (A to Z reversal) codingLetter-cluster analogies that combine a shift with a reversal of the clusterLetter position values and the EJOTY shortcut

Common traps

Testing a fixed +1 shift, which fits M to N and then breaks at E to V
Getting the opposite of a letter wrong by one, for example writing T for H instead of S
Reversing the order of the three letters as well as replacing them

Letter positions also decide Reasoning Q.15 (09 Sep 2024, 09:00), which runs a letter-and-number series, and Reasoning Q.22, a four-letter cluster series.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.