SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 16 September 2025, Shift 3 · English Comprehension · Question 9 of 75

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: Only after years of archival research did the historian manage to ___ the contradictory accounts of the regime’s collapse.

(a)retract
(b)revise
(c)reconcile
(d)reverberate

Answer

Why

Correct — C. The trigger is the blank's object, the contradictory accounts. Accounts that contradict each other have to be made consistent, or shown to fit together.

That is what reconcile means: to make or show to be compatible.
Only after years of archival research did the historian manage to reconcile the contradictory accounts of the regime’s collapse → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
retract — Retract means to withdraw a statement one has made. The historian did not make these accounts, and withdrawing a claim does not resolve a contradiction between accounts.
(b)
revise — Revise means to reconsider and alter something, usually one's own work or opinion. It changes a text but does not settle the conflict that contradictory points to.
(d)
reverberate — Reverberate means to echo, or to have continuing effects, as in 'the news reverberated through the capital'. It says nothing about making conflicting accounts agree.

Concept

A vocabulary blank is decided by collocation: which verb naturally takes the object that follows. The object here is contradictory accounts, and reconcile is the verb English regularly pairs with conflicting accounts, claims or figures.

All four options begin with re-, so the prefix cannot help. Read each verb against the object.

Reconcile has a second sense, restoring friendly relations between people, as in reconciling after a quarrel.

The sentence itself uses inversion: 'Only after years of archival research did the historian manage'. An Only after phrase at the front pulls the auxiliary did in front of the subject. English Q.8 of the same sitting tests that pattern directly.

Key facts

Reconcile means to make or show to be compatible, as in reconciling two sets of figures.
Reconcile also means to restore friendly relations between people.
Retract means to withdraw a statement or claim as untrue or unjustified.
Reverberate means to echo, or to have continuing serious effects.

Study next

Collocations of reconcile, such as reconcile differences, reconcile accounts and be reconciled toInversion after Only after, Only when and Only then

Common traps

Choosing revise because historians revise accounts, without reading the word contradictory that sets the task
Choosing by the shared prefix re- rather than by what each verb does to the object

Here the clue is the blank's own object, in a formal sentence.

14 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.2 uses reconcile in its other sense, keying 'To reconcile after a conflict' as the meaning of Bury the hatchet. 17 Sep 2025, 09:00, English Q.23 turns on the same Only after inversion: 'Only after the ceasefire will negotiations begin'.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

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