SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 1 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 17 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.

Directions: These questions are based on the following information. There are 7 family members: P, Q, R, S, T, U and V going to a party. There are three generations in which only two are married couples. P is the grandfather of U who is a male. R is the son in law of S.V is the son of Q.S has only two children, both of the same gender. T is the sister in law of R. How many males are there?

(a)4
(b)5
(c)3
(d)2

Answer

Why

Correct — A.
Rule: fix every gender from the relation words, then count.

R is S's son-in-law: male, and married to a daughter of S.
S's two children share a gender, so both are daughters.
T, R's sister-in-law, is one of them.

R's wife is the other. Of the rest, P, U and V are male, so she is Q.
With R and Q as one couple, the other is P and S, the grandparents, so S is female.

Males: P, R, U and V = 4 → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
5 — 5 counts S as male. 'Son-in-law of S' does not fix S's gender, but the second couple does: S is married to P, the grandfather, so S is the grandmother.
(c)
3 — 3 drops one of the males. Recount: P is a grandfather, R a son-in-law, V a son, and the stem states that U 'is a male'.
(d)
2 — 2 counts only the grandfather and the son-in-law. The third generation adds U, stated male, and V, the son of Q.

Concept

A family puzzle turns on the gender-fixing words: grandfather, son, son-in-law, sister-in-law. Mark each one on the member it describes before drawing anything.

Then use the structure. Three generations with only two married couples gives one couple at the top, P and S, and one in the middle, R and Q, with U and V as the youngest generation.

A member with no gender word, S here, gets one from the marriage.

The stem never names R's wife. She is found by elimination: she must be S's daughter, T is her sister, and P, U and V are male, which leaves Q.

Key facts

A son-in-law of S is the husband of S's daughter.
A man's sister-in-law is his wife's sister or his brother's wife.
The tree: P and S at the top, their daughters Q and T, Q married to R, and U and V below.
Males: P, R, U and V. Females: S, Q and T.

Study next

Family puzzles with a fixed number of couples and generationsCoded blood relations, such as A + B meaning A is the father of BRelations that carry no gender: cousin, sibling, spouse

Common traps

Counting S as male because 'son-in-law of S' sounds like a father-in-law.
Reading T as R's own sister rather than his wife's sister.

Smaller trees with a single question are set at 25 Sep 2024, 09:00, Reasoning Q.11, where 3 is 2's parent but not the mother, so his wife 1 is keyed as the mother, and at 18 Sep 2025, 12:30, Reasoning Q.10, which asks who is the father of S.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Space Orientation — all 8 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.