Reasoning and General Intelligence
The recurring question types
General Intelligence here follows the standard SSC pattern: series, analogy, coding–decoding, blood relations, direction sense, syllogism, seating arrangement, inequalities, clock and calendar, dice and cubes, plus non-verbal items (mirror image, paper folding, embedded figures, figure series).
Rules worth memorising
- Direction sense: draw axes and turn on paper; keep the start as origin; a left turn while facing south means facing east.
- Blood relations: convert every phrase to a symbol (A is father of B → A↑B) before drawing a tree. Never hold the chain in your head.
- Syllogism: use Venn diagrams. A conclusion is valid only if it holds in every possible diagram. "Some A are B" does not guarantee "some B are A" when the premise is "all A are B".
- Coding: check letter-position shifts separately for each letter and check whether the word is reversed.
- Cubes: a cube cut into n³ small cubes gives 8 corners with three painted faces, 12(n−2) with two, 6(n−2)² with one, and (n−2)³ with none.
Worked example
Find the next term: 3, 7, 16, 35, 74, ? First differences are 4, 9, 19, 39 - no constant second difference, so a linear rule fails. Test a multiplicative rule: 3×2+1 = 7; 7×2+2 = 16; 16×2+3 = 35; 35×2+4 = 74. The increment rises by one each step, so the next term is 74×2+5 = 153.
Traps
Assuming a uniform increment when the pattern is two-tier; treating "either or" conclusions as automatically valid; forgetting that circular seating can face inward or outward; counting the starting day in calendar problems.