SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 19 September 2025, Shift 3 · Quantitative Aptitude · Question 2 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.

If you subtract the square of a number from 4052 and then multiply the result by 15, you get 41340. What is that number?

(a)46
(b)36
(c)26
(d)86

Answer

Why

Correct — B.
Call the number n. The stem says: (4052 − n²) × 15 = 41340

Undo the ×15: 4052 − n² = 41340 ÷ 15 = 2756
Undo the subtraction: n² = 4052 − 2756 = 1296
Take the square root: n = √1296 = 36 → option (b)

Check: 36² = 1296, 4052 − 1296 = 2756, 2756 × 15 = 41340.

Why the others are wrong

(a)
46 — 46² = 2116, so 4052 − 2116 = 1936, and 1936 × 15 = 29040, well short of 41340.
(c)
26 — 26² = 676, so 4052 − 676 = 3376, and 3376 × 15 = 50640, which overshoots 41340.
(d)
86 — 86² = 7396, larger than 4052, so the subtraction goes negative (−3344), and 15 times a negative number cannot be 41340.

Concept

Working backwards: when a question applies steps to an unknown and reports the result, undo the steps in reverse order, each with its inverse operation.

The last step was ×15, so divide by 15 first. The step before was 'subtract the square from 4052', so n² = 4052 − 2756.

Read the direction carefully: subtract A from B means B − A.

A quick screen: n² has to be less than 4052, so n is below √4052 ≈ 63.7. That rules out 86 before any arithmetic.

Key facts

Undo operations in reverse order: the last one applied is the first one undone
Subtract A from B means B − A
41340 ÷ 15 = 2756
36² = 1296

Study next

Reverse-operation problems ending in a cube or a square rootRecognising perfect squares from 30² to 99² by the unit digitRecovering an original value from a chain of percentage changes

Common traps

Reading 'subtract the square of a number from 4052' as n² − 4052, which gives n² = 6808, not a perfect square
Taking the square root of 2756 and forgetting the 4052 step

The item hides a perfect square inside two arithmetic steps: undo the multiplication, then the subtraction, and the root comes out as a whole number.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.