SSC CGL 2025 Tier-I · 21 September 2025, Shift 3 · General Intelligence and Reasoning · Question 25 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 "CRANE" is coded as "DSBOF", how is "DSBOF" coded?

(a)ETCPG
(b)DTCOP
(c)ESCPF
(d)DTCPF

Answer

Why

Correct — A.
Rule: each letter moves forward one place (+1).

CRANE → DSBOF: C→D, R→S, A→B, N→O, E→F.
Now code DSBOF the same way: D→E, S→T, B→C, O→P, F→G.
Code = ETCPG → option (a).

Why the others are wrong

(b)
DTCOP — DTCOP leaves D and O unchanged and ends in P, ten places past F. Under +1, D → E, O → P and F → G.
(c)
ESCPF — ESCPF keeps S and F as they are. Under +1, S → T and F → G, just as R → S and E → F in CRANE.
(d)
DTCPF — DTCPF shifts only the middle letters. D and F must move +1 too, to E and G.

Concept

In a letter-shift code, find the change from the given pair, then apply it to the new word. Here the new word is the code itself, DSBOF, so the +1 is applied a second time.

+1 on top of +1 is the same as +2 on the original: C, R, A, N, E → E, T, C, P, G.

The stem asks how DSBOF is coded, not what it decodes to. Decoding would run the shift backwards and return CRANE.

Key facts

Here the code is +1 for every letter: CRANE → DSBOF.
Coding a code applies the shift again: +1 twice is +2 from CRANE.

Study next

Decoding: finding the word from its code by reversing the shiftCodes with a different shift at each positionCodes that reverse the word before shifting

Common traps

Decoding DSBOF back to CRANE (−1) when the stem asks how DSBOF is coded (+1).
Shifting only some of the letters, as in options (c) and (d).

19 Sep 2025, 09:00, Reasoning Q.18 uses the same +1 code: GOAL → HPBM, keyed FAIL → GBJM.

21 Sep 2025, 16:00, Reasoning Q.20 (this shift) runs a −1 code instead: SNAKE → RMZJD, keyed ZEBRA → YDAQZ.

Related PYQs

No directly related past PYQ was found.

Topic: Coding & de-coding — all 91 SSC CGL questions on it, every solved shift.