SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 12 September 2025, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 14 of 100

We transcribed this text from the pictures on a candidate's response sheet for this shift; the answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. Solution last reviewed 11 September 2026.

Where this paper and its answers come from

SSC does not publish CGL question papers or a public answer key. From 2025 the candidate response sheet prints every question and option as a picture, so the text here is transcribed from those pictures for this shift and checked against them independently; where the layout carries meaning, the picture is shown as well. Each answer is the key SSC colour-marked on that sheet. SSC released a tentative key for challenge and later its final one, both only to candidates behind a login, and the sheet does not say which of the two it carries. The solutions are written by UnlockIAS.

Instruction: In a certain coding system: ‘dream focus build skill’ is coded as ‘trq, xnz, hmd, clv’ ‘focus logic dream’ is coded as ‘trq, jkp, xnz’ ‘trust logic build dream’ is coded as ‘xnj, clv, jkp, trq’ Question: What is the code for ‘build skill logic trust’?

(a)clv, hmd, jkp, xnj
(b)clv, xnj, jkp, trq
(c)hmd, xnz, jkp, xnj
(d)hmd, clv, xnj, xnz

Answer

Why

Correct — A. Rule: a word two sentences share takes the code their codes share.

dream is in all three sentences, trq in all three codes: dream = trq.
Sentences 1 and 3 share dream and build, codes trq and clv: build = clv.
Sentences 2 and 3 share dream and logic, codes trq and jkp: logic = jkp.

Left over: skill = hmd (sentence 1), trust = xnj (sentence 3).

build skill logic trust = clv, hmd, jkp, xnj → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
clv, xnj, jkp, trq — trq is the code for dream, which the question does not contain. Putting it in leaves out hmd, the code for skill.
(c)
hmd, xnz, jkp, xnj — xnz is the code for focus, which the question does not contain. It stands where clv, the code for build, belongs.
(d)
hmd, clv, xnj, xnz — xnz is the code for focus again, and jkp, the code for logic, is missing. The other three codes, hmd, clv and xnj, are right.

Concept

In a sentence code each word keeps one code, but the codes are not printed in word order. Sentence 1 has build third and skill fourth, yet build turns out to be clv, the fourth code.

So never match by position. Match by overlap: the words two sentences share must take the codes their codes share.

Start with the word that appears most often. dream is in all three sentences, and trq is the one code that appears in all three codes. Each word you fix shrinks the next overlap to a single pair.

The four options list their codes in different orders. Treat each option as a set: what decides it is which four codes it contains, not where they sit.

Key facts

dream = trq, focus = xnz, build = clv, skill = hmd.
logic = jkp and trust = xnj.
In sentence 1, build is the third word but clv is the fourth code, so position does not carry over.

Study next

Sentence codes written in numbers, such as 'mountain stand tall' = 33 66 44Finding one word's code from three coded sentencesLetter-for-letter codes, where position does matter

Common traps

Matching words to codes by position, which the jumbled order makes unreliable.
Choosing an option with three right codes and one borrowed from a word the question lacks, such as xnz for focus.

The same overlap method finds 'stand' = 66 at 13 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.15, and codes a whole sentence, 'The song sounds loud', at 14 Sep 2025, 12:30, Reasoning Q.16.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Coding & de-coding — all 91 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.