If A is the son of B, and B is the brother of C, how is C related to A?

Correct — B. Place each person on the family tree, one statement at a time.

Rule: a parent's brother is an uncle (a parent's sister, an aunt).

A is the son of B, so B is A's father.
B is the brother of C, so C is B's sibling, on the father's row.
C is therefore a sibling of A's father. Among the options, that is Uncle, option (b).

Why the others are wrong

• (a)
  Father — B is A's father, not C. C is B's sibling, so C stands beside the father on the tree, not in his place.
• (c)
  Brother — A brother would be on A's own row. C is a sibling of A's father, one generation above A.
• (d)
  Cousin — A cousin is the child of an uncle or aunt, on A's own row. C is the uncle himself, one generation up.

Blood-relation questions are solved by placing people on a family tree. Parents go one row up, children one row down, siblings on the same row.

Here B goes above A as the father, and C joins B's row as a sibling. A sibling of a parent is an uncle or aunt, and that fixes the answer without knowing anything else about C.

Key facts

• A parent's brother is an uncle, and a parent's sister an aunt.
• 'X is the brother of Y' fixes X's gender, not Y's.
• An uncle's or aunt's child is a cousin, on your own generation.

Common traps

• Reading 'B is the brother of C' as making C male.
• Linking C to A directly and answering Father, instead of going through B.

No directly related past PYQ was found.