General Intelligence and Reasoning
General Intelligence and Reasoning tests analogy, series, coding-decoding, blood relations, syllogism, seating arrangement and non-verbal reasoning. Speed comes from recognizing patterns, not from reading every option twice.
Core question types
- Series: check differences, ratios, squares, cubes and alternating patterns.
- Coding-decoding: identify letter shifts or positional values; A = 1 to Z = 26.
- Blood relations: draw a family tree and mark gender explicitly.
- Syllogism: use Venn diagrams; “some” does not imply “all.”
- Seating arrangement: fix one anchor and place left/right relative to facing direction.
Worked example
Find the next term: 3, 8, 15, 24, ?. Differences are 5, 7, 9 - successive odd numbers. The next difference is 11, so the missing term is 24 + 11 = 35. Alternatively, the terms are n² − 1 for n = 2, 3, 4, 5, giving 6² − 1 = 35.
Traps that cost marks
Ignoring the facing direction in seating puzzles, treating “some A are B” as “all A are B,” and missing an alternating pattern in series are frequent. In blood relations, do not assume gender from a name or role. In coding, check both forward and backward shifts.