General Mental Ability & Logical Reasoning
Reasoning is the best-value block in the GAT. It needs no syllabus, no facts and no Class-12 subject, so a humanities student and a science student start level; and unlike current affairs it is a closed set — the same dozen question shapes recur every year, and every hour of practice measurably raises your accuracy. Roughly 12 to 15 of the 50 questions come from here. The method throughout is the same: recognise the shape first, then apply the fixed procedure for that shape. Candidates who instead stare at each question hoping for insight run out of time; candidates who classify in five seconds and then execute do not.
Coding–Decoding, Blood Relations and Directions
These three are the most mechanical questions in the paper, which means they are the most reliably winnable. Each has a single correct procedure, and the only way to lose marks is to try to do it in your head.
- Coding–decoding. Write the alphabet positions of both words and subtract. If CAT → DBU the shift is +1 on every letter; if CAT → XZG each letter has been reflected (27 − position). Check three letters before you commit, because a two-letter match can be coincidence.
- Blood relations. Draw it. Circle for female, square for male, a horizontal line for spouse and a vertical line down for child. Four symbols solve every such question, and the ones people get wrong are always the ones they tried to hold in memory.
- Direction sense. Draw the north arrow first, then each leg to rough scale. A right turn while facing south takes you west, not east — which is the single commonest error, and it disappears the moment you draw instead of imagine.
- Shortest distance. Once drawn, net the east–west and north–south movements separately, then use Pythagoras on the two totals. Displacement is the hypotenuse; distance walked is the sum of the legs — questions ask for one and offer the other.
| Phrase | Means |
|---|---|
| My mother's only son | Myself, if the speaker is male — the classic self-reference trick |
| Father's brother / mother's brother | Paternal uncle / maternal uncle |
| Sister of my father's wife | My mother's sister — maternal aunt |
| Son of my grandfather's only child | My brother or myself |
| Wife of my mother's son | My wife or my brother's wife |
Syllogisms, Seating Arrangements and Statement–Conclusion
A syllogism gives premises and asks which conclusion necessarily follows. The one rule that matters: judge only what the premises force, never what the world happens to be like. "All roses are flowers; all flowers fade" forces "all roses fade" even if you know a plastic rose that does not.
| Premises | Follows | Does not follow |
|---|---|---|
| All A are B; all B are C | All A are C | All C are A |
| Some A are B; all B are C | Some A are C | All A are C |
| No A is B; all C are B | No C is A | Some C are A |
| Some A are B | Some B are A | Some A are not B |
🧠 Draw two circles — and then try to draw a counter-example
Venn diagrams settle syllogisms faster than rules do. Sketch the premises, then attempt to draw an arrangement that satisfies every premise while making the conclusion false. If you can draw such a picture, the conclusion does not follow; if you genuinely cannot, it does. That single test replaces the whole table above, and it is much harder to misremember under pressure. Watch especially for "some": some A are B leaves open whether some A are not B, so both look tempting and only one is forced.🧠 Seating arrangements: start from the definite clue, not the first one
A seating or ordering puzzle gives clues in a deliberately unhelpful order. Read them all, then begin with the most restrictive — "P is at the extreme left" or "R sits third from the right" fixes a position outright, while "Q is next to S" allows many. Place the definite clues, then use the flexible ones to eliminate. Two conventions save marks: for a circular arrangement facing the centre, left and right are the mirror of what they look like on your page; and always draw the seats as empty boxes first so you never place two people in one seat. If a puzzle carries four questions, it is worth four minutes; if it carries one, leave it and come back.🎯 Why reasoning is where a CUET score is actually made
Every other block in the GAT has a ceiling set by something outside your control. GK depends on how much you happen to have absorbed; current affairs depends on which items the setter chose. Reasoning depends only on how many you have practised, and the improvement curve is steep at the start: most students go from roughly half correct to over eighty per cent within two hundred questions, simply by learning to classify the shape before solving. So the highest-return study plan for Section III is twenty reasoning questions a day, timed, with every error logged by question type rather than by question — because five mistakes in direction sense is one lesson, not five.Key takeaways
- Reasoning is about 12–15 of 50 GAT questions, needs no syllabus, and is a closed practisable set.
- Test series in order: differences, differences of differences, ratios, squares/cubes, alternating.
- Convert letters to positions; EJOTY anchors locate any letter, and opposite letters sum to 27.
- In analogies, state the relationship in words before looking at the options.
- Always draw blood relations and direction problems — four symbols and a north arrow solve them.
- Displacement is the hypotenuse of the netted movements; distance walked is the sum of the legs.
- For syllogisms, try to draw a counter-example — if you can, the conclusion does not follow.
- In arrangements, begin with the most restrictive clue, not the first one given.
Practice questions (8)
Attempt each one before opening the answer. Every explanation names the tempting wrong option as well as the right one, because that is where marks are lost.
Find the next term: 2, 5, 10, 17, 26, ?
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Answer: B — 37
The differences are 3, 5, 7, 9 — consecutive odd numbers — so the next difference is 11, giving 26 + 11 = 37. Equivalently the series is n² + 1 for n = 1, 2, 3…, and 6² + 1 = 37. Two of the five standard tests find it, which is why the order of testing matters more than inspiration.If in a code CAT is written as XZG, then DOG is written as:
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Answer: A — WLT
Each letter is reflected: position → 27 − position. C(3)→X(24), A(1)→Z(26), T(20)→G(7). So D(4)→23=W, O(15)→12=L, G(7)→20=T, giving WLT. This is why opposite letters summing to 27 is worth memorising — the whole question becomes three subtractions.Pointing to a photograph, a man says, "She is the daughter of my grandfather's only son." How is she related to him?
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Answer: B — His sister
The grandfather's only son is the speaker's own father, so the girl is his father's daughter — his sister. Draw it: grandfather → father (only son) → the speaker and the girl as siblings. Self-reference clues like "my grandfather's only son" are the standard device here.A man walks 4 km north, then 3 km east. His distance from the starting point is:
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Answer: B — 5 km
The two legs are perpendicular, so the displacement is the hypotenuse: √(4² + 3²) = √25 = 5 km. Option 1 (7 km) is the distance walked, not the distance from the start — questions deliberately offer both, so read whether displacement or path length is asked.Premises: Some pens are books. All books are papers. Which conclusion necessarily follows?
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Answer: B — Some pens are papers
The pens that are books must be papers, so "some pens are papers" is forced. "All pens are papers" is not, because the premise only spoke of some pens — and you can draw a diagram in which the remaining pens sit outside papers entirely, which is the counter-example test.Doctor : Stethoscope :: Carpenter : ?
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Answer: C — Saw
The relationship is professional-to-tool, so the answer must be a tool: a saw. Wood is the raw material, furniture the product and workshop the workplace — three plausible words from the same field, each testing whether you named the relationship before looking.If A = 1 and Z = 26, the letter opposite to K in the alphabet is:
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Answer: B — P
Opposite letters always sum to 27. K is 11, so the opposite is 27 − 11 = 16, which is P. This is computed in a second rather than counted from either end, and it is the reason to memorise the EJOTY anchors (E=5, J=10, O=15, T=20, Y=25).In a seating puzzle, which clue should be placed on the diagram first?
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Answer: B — The most restrictive clue, such as one fixing an extreme position
Clues are deliberately given in an unhelpful order. "P is at the extreme left" fixes one position outright, whereas "Q is next to S" permits many arrangements. Place the definite clues first and use the flexible ones only to eliminate.