SSC CGL 2024 Tier-I · 9 September 2024, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 22 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.

Which figure should replace the question mark (?) if the following series were to be continued?

Answer

Why

Correct — C. Each box is a 3 by 3 grid whose top-left three cells are always blank, so six symbols sit in a staircase.

Rule: figure 4 turns into figure 5 by the same six moves that turned figure 2 into figure 3.

Those moves, read straight off figures 2 and 3:
top-right goes to bottom-left
middle-right goes to bottom-centre
bottom-right goes to the centre

centre goes to middle-right
bottom-centre goes to bottom-right
bottom-left goes to top-right

Figure 4: triangle top-right, 8 centre, T middle-right, = bottom-left, 9 bottom-centre, 2 bottom-right.

Run the moves: = top-right, 2 centre, 8 middle-right, triangle bottom-left, T bottom-centre, 9 bottom-right — option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
It parks 8 at bottom-left, but 8 passed through that corner back in figure 3 and has moved on. Bottom-left is where the newest symbol lands, and the newest symbol here is the triangle.
(b)
It leaves the triangle in the centre. The centre is the cell a symbol occupies just before it drops out of the box, and the triangle only entered at figure 4.
(d)
It gets the triangle and the = into the right corners but scrambles the rest. T sits at middle-right in figure 4 and must fall to bottom-centre, while 9 slides one place along to bottom-right.

Concept

A symbol-shift figure series asks you to track symbols, not cells. Pick one symbol, follow it across all four boxes, and its route usually becomes obvious.

This series runs on a two-beat cycle. On one beat every symbol creeps a single step along a fixed circuit, the symbol standing in the centre drops out of the box, and a fresh symbol enters at top-right.

On the alternate beat the symbols make the longer jumps used above. Both beats leave the six-cell staircase untouched, so the shape never helps you and only the symbols do.

The centre cell is the exit. B stood there in figure 1 and is gone from figure 2, and U stood there in figure 3 and is gone from figure 4.

Key facts

The top-left three cells of the 3 by 3 grid are blank in every box of the series.
A new symbol enters at the top-right cell — 8 at figure 2 and the triangle at figure 4.
The symbol sitting in the centre cell is absent from the following figure.

Study next

Symbol-shift series where elements enter and leave a fixed frameFigure series that alternate between two different transformations

Common traps

Reading the boxes as a rotation of the whole grid, which the unchanging staircase shape rules out.
Assuming the newest symbol stays near the top-right when it in fact crosses to the bottom-left corner.

SSC runs several non-verbal items inside one Reasoning block. This paper also carries a circle-and-rectangle series at 09 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.24 and a pattern-completion figure at Q.10.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.