SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · 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.

The following Venn diagram shows Men's profession as Doctors and Chess Players. Men only 78 | Men and Doctors 23 | Doctors only 75 | Men, Doctors and Chess Players 24 | Men and Chess Players 45 | Doctors and Chess Players 34 | Chess Players only 76 How many men are doctors?

(a)47
(b)34
(c)23
(d)24

Answer

Why

Correct — A. The diagram carries the stem: a three-circle Venn for Men, Doctors and Chess Players.

It reads 78 in Men only, 75 in Doctors only and 76 in Chess Players only.

The overlaps read 23 for Men and Doctors, 45 for Men and Chess, 34 for Doctors and Chess, and 24 at the centre.

'Men who are doctors' is the whole Men and Doctors overlap, which is two regions:

men who are doctors but not chess players: 23
men who are doctors and chess players: 24

23 + 24 = 47, which is option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
34 — 34 is the Doctors and Chess Players overlap. It counts doctors who play chess and lie outside the Men circle, which answers a different question.
(c)
23 — 23 is only the part of the Men and Doctors overlap lying outside the Chess Players circle. The 24 at the centre are men and doctors too, so they belong in the total.
(d)
24 — 24 is the centre alone, the men who are doctors and chess players. It is the smaller half of the answer rather than the whole of it.

Concept

'How many A are B' asks for the full intersection of two circles, and in a three-circle diagram that is always two regions added together: the part shared by A and B alone, plus the centre shared by all three.

The centre is the region candidates forget. It sits inside every circle, so it counts towards every pairwise question the diagram can be asked.

The numbers printed in a Venn diagram are region counts. None is a circle total, and none already contains another.

The stem and the diagram arrive as a single image in this paper, so read the three labels before you read the numbers. Which circle is Men and which is Doctors decides which two regions you add.

Key facts

Men and Doctors together come to 23 + 24 = 47.
The centre region belongs to all three circles at once and counts in every pairwise total.
The Men circle totals 78 + 23 + 24 + 45 = 170.

Study next

Reading circle totals off a three-circle Venn diagramThe wording gap between 'at least two', 'exactly two' and 'only one'Two-set problems using n(A or B) = n(A) + n(B) − n(A and B)

Common traps

Answering 23 and leaving the centre out.
Picking an overlap that does not touch the circle named first in the question.
Treating a printed number as a circle total rather than a region count.

This section also sets a Venn item at Q.9 of the same shift (9 Sep 2024, 16:00), where 'more than one post' again turns on remembering the centre number.

Label the regions on the paper before you add anything.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.