SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 16 September 2025, Shift 2 · English Comprehension · Question 11 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 13 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.

Select the correct option: He spoke so ___ that even abstruse theories seemed digestible.

(a)lucid
(b)lucidly
(c)lucidity
(d)lucidness

Answer

Why

Correct — B. The blank tells you how he spoke, so it modifies the verb spoke. A word that modifies an action verb is an adverb.

In so ___ that, so marks degree and the that-clause gives the result. The word after so must match the job it does: here, the adverb.

Lucidly is the adverb of lucid → option (b).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
lucid — Lucid is the adjective. It fits after a linking verb (his talk was so lucid that…), but spoke is an action verb and needs the adverb.
(c)
lucidity — Lucidity is a noun, and a noun cannot fill the slot in spoke so ___ that. The noun needs other words: he spoke with such lucidity that…
(d)
lucidness — Lucidness is another noun formed from lucid. It fails for the same reason as lucidity: a noun after so cannot describe how someone spoke.

Concept

This is a word-form item: four words from one root, and the grammar of the sentence picks the part of speech.

Ask what the blank describes. Here it answers how? about the verb spoke, so it must be an adverb, often formed by adding -ly to the adjective: lucid → lucidly.

The frame so + adjective or adverb + that-clause states a result.

The meaning confirms the grammar. Abstruse means hard to understand and digestible means easy to take in; lucid, meaning clear, is the quality that turns one into the other.

Key facts

Lucid is the adjective (clear, easy to understand), lucidly the adverb, lucidity and lucidness the nouns.
An action verb such as spoke, ran or wrote is modified by an adverb.
A linking verb such as was, seemed or became takes an adjective: his talk was so lucid that…
Abstruse means difficult to understand.

Study next

So … that and such … that result clausesAdjective or adverb after linking verbs: seem, look, feelNoun, adjective and adverb forms of one root

Common traps

Choosing lucid because so + adjective + that is the memorised pattern. The adjective must describe a noun or pronoun, as in his talk was so lucid that… Here the slot describes the action spoke, so it takes the adverb.
Choosing lucidity because a noun names the quality being praised. The grammar of the slot decides, not the meaning.

The same frame is asked at 19 Sep 2025, 16:00, English Q.9: He spoke so ___ that the audience was mesmerized, keyed fluently, with fluent, fluented and fluency as the wrong options.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Fill in the blank — all 96 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.