SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 10 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 5 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 word-pair that best represents a similar relationship to the one expressed in the pair of words given below. (The words must be considered as meaningful English words and must NOT be related to each other based on the number of letters/number of consonants/vowels in the word) Egypt : Nile

(a)South Korea : Mekong
(b)Brazil : Colorado
(c)Russia : Mississippi
(d)Myanmar : Irrawaddy

Answer

Why

Correct — D. Rule: country : the major river that flows through it.

The Nile runs north through Egypt to the Mediterranean.

Myanmar's principal river is the Irrawaddy — it rises in the north, runs almost the length of the country and reaches the Andaman Sea through a wide delta.

Option (d) is the only pairing whose river actually flows in the country named.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
South Korea : Mekong — The Mekong is a mainland Southeast Asian river — China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia, Vietnam. It never reaches the Korean peninsula.
(b)
Brazil : Colorado — The Colorado rises in the Rocky Mountains and drains the American southwest into Mexico. Brazil's defining river is the Amazon.
(c)
Russia : Mississippi — The Mississippi drains the central United States. Russia's great rivers are the Volga, the Ob, the Yenisei and the Lena.

Concept

SSC's word-pair analogies lean on country-and-feature relations: country to river, to capital, to currency, to parliament.

Here the relation is country to principal river, and the item is settled by elimination, not by ranking rivers.

Three options put a famous river in a country it does not flow through, so you never have to decide whether a river is truly the 'main' one. Locate first, rank second.

The Irrawaddy is also written Ayeyarwady, the spelling used in Myanmar itself. Both name the same river, and either form may appear in an option.

Key facts

The Irrawaddy (Ayeyarwady) rises in northern Myanmar and enters the Andaman Sea through a delta.
The Mekong flows through China, Myanmar, Laos, Thailand, Cambodia and Vietnam.
The Colorado drains the American southwest into Mexico.
The Mississippi drains the central United States.
The Nile flows north through Egypt to the Mediterranean.

Study next

Country-and-capital and country-and-currency analogy pairsRivers and the cities that stand on themRivers and the seas or oceans they empty into

Common traps

Recognising the river but never checking the country — all four options name real, famous rivers
Pairing by continent: the Mekong is Asian and so is South Korea, but the Mekong does not flow there
Hunting for a link based on letter counts, which the bracketed note rules out

SSC attaches a standing note to word-pair items saying the link must be meaning-based, not a letter count, and on a geography pair the fastest filter is location. The same shift tests physical geography directly in General Awareness, at GA Q.1 on the 'Loo' and GA Q.4 on the easterly jet stream.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.