General Intelligence and Reasoning: Patterns, Relations and Logic
Core topics
Prepare number, letter and mixed series; analogy and odd-one-out classification; coding–decoding; blood relations; direction and distance; ranking and arrangement; syllogism; Venn diagrams; linear and circular seating; clock and calendar; mathematical operations; dice and cube counting; mirror and water images; paper folding and embedded figures.
Traps that cost marks
Position from the end of the alphabet is 27 minus the position from the front (E is 5th from the front and 22nd from the end). In blood relations, build a small family tree outward from the speaker and never infer gender from a name or a pronoun alone. In direction sense, track the rotation: facing south and turning left means facing east. Syllogism items asking what is "possible" often make an apparently invalid conclusion valid - check the possibility cases. In circular seating, first fix one person and mark whether each faces centre or outside before placing anyone else.
Rule of thumb
For coding questions, test letter-shift first, then reverse alphabet (A=26), then position-sum, in that order.
Worked example
Pointing to a photograph, a man says, "She is the daughter of my grandfather's only son." The grandfather's only son is the man's father, so the daughter is the man's sister.