SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 2 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 8 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 figure from among the given options that can replace the question mark (?) and logically complete the series.

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Rule: each corner symbol steps one place clockwise, and whichever symbol arrives at the top-left cell turns upside down and stays so.

Follow the A: top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left. In frame five it returns to the top-left, so it arrives inverted.

The same trigger inverted the arrow in frame two, flipped the P in three and turned the triangle point-up in four.

The centre trident alternates upright and inverted, so frame five is upright.

Option (a) alone has all four: inverted A, upward triangle, downward arrow, upright trident.

Why the others are wrong

(b)
Two faults. The A is upright although it has just landed in the top-left cell, and the triangle points down although it turned point-up in frame four and has stayed that way.
(c)
Every position is right and the triangle is right, but the A is still upright. The top-left cell is exactly where the inversion happens, and this is the frame the A reaches it.
(d)
The A is correctly inverted, but the bottom-left arrow points up. That arrow inverted in frame two, when it passed through the top-left cell, and has pointed down ever since.

Concept

Read a two-rule figural series one element at a time, never a frame at a time.

Fix on a single symbol, write down its cell in all four given frames, and the movement rule falls out — a clockwise step here.

Then treat orientation as a separate question: which symbols changed, and where. When every change happens in the same cell, the cell is the trigger, not the frame number.

The centre symbol usually runs its own rule; here it simply alternates upright and inverted.

The positions alone look like a 90° rotation of the whole frame, but they are not: under a real rotation every symbol would tilt with it, and here the letters and the trident keep their bearing. The symbols move between cells; the frame does not turn.

Key facts

The corner cycle is clockwise: top-left, top-right, bottom-right, bottom-left, back to top-left.
A symbol inverts on arriving at the top-left cell and keeps that orientation in every later frame.
The central trident runs its own rule, alternating upright and inverted each frame.

Study next

Figural series where elements move anticlockwise, or by two cells a frameSeries in which one element is added or one line removed each frameSeries combining rotation with a change of shading

Common traps

Deciding the whole frame rotates: the cells fit a 90° turn, but the symbols stay upright, so it does not
Assuming the inversions alternate, when each symbol inverts once and then stays inverted
Choosing on position alone, which settles nothing here — all four options put the same symbol in the same cell

SSC's four-frame figural series give three transitions, enough to test a rule twice: confirm it on frame 1 to 2 and again on frame 3 to 4 before looking at the options. The same shift runs a single-object rotation series at Reasoning Q.13.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.