SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 1 of 99

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.

If in the word ELECTRIC, all vowels are removed, which letter will be the 3rd from the left?

(a)L
(b)C
(c)T
(d)R

Answer

Why

Correct — C.
Rule: strike out every vowel first, then count along what is left.

ELECTRIC = E, L, E, C, T, R, I, C
Vowels: E, E and I, all three removed
Left: L, C, T, R, C

Third from the left: L (1), C (2), T (3) → option (c).

Why the others are wrong

(a)
L — L is the first letter left once the vowels go (L, C, T, R, C). Choosing it stops the count at 1 instead of 3.
(b)
C — C is second from the left in L, C, T, R, C, and last as well. Landing on it means counting one letter short of third.
(d)
R — R is fourth from the left in L, C, T, R, C. It comes from counting one letter past T.

Concept

A position question on a changed word has two steps: rewrite the word after the change, then count along the new string. Counting in the original word gives a different letter.

ELECTRIC has eight letters, three of them vowels: E, E and I. Removing them leaves five consonants, L C T R C. With five letters the third is the middle one, so T is third from the left and third from the right.

The English vowels are A, E, I, O and U. ELECTRIC holds E twice and I once, and both E's go because the question says all vowels are removed.

Key facts

The five vowels are A, E, I, O and U.
ELECTRIC without its vowels reads L, C, T, R, C.
In a string of five letters, the third from the left is also the third from the right.

Study next

Letter-position items where a word's letters are first arranged in alphabetical orderItems that remove consonants, or letters at odd positions, before countingCounting the letters of the alphabet between two positions of a rearranged word

Common traps

Counting in the original word, where the third letter from the left is the vowel E
Removing only the first E and leaving the second one in place

12 Sep 2025, 09:00, Reasoning Q.9 also rewrites the word before counting: STUDENT in alphabetical order is D E N S T T U, and the letters between E and S number 13 (option b).

10 Sep 2024, 16:00, Reasoning Q.21 does the same with WISDOM, keyed Five (option c).

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Indexing — all 53 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.