Analogy Questions and Answers

Answer: A

Marina is the beach of Chennai, just as Juhu is a beach of Mumbai, so the analogy pairs a city with a well-known sea shore. Puri is a beach town in Odisha and not in Chennai, Kovalam is a beach near Thiruvananthapuram in Kerala, and Baga is a beach in Goa. Marina Beach on the Bay of Bengal in Chennai is one of the longest urban beaches in India. Only Marina fits the Chennai blank.

The analogy pairs each city with its best-known sea shore, as Juhu is for Mumbai, so Kovalam and Baga, though famous beaches, belong to other places.

Answer: A

The pair 6:30 matches the series. In 5:25 the second number is 5 times the first. The same relation holds for 6:30, because \(6\times 5 = 30\). In 9:27 the multiplier is 3, in 8:24 it is 3, and in 10:30 it is 3, so those pairs follow another relation. Only 6:30 repeats the multiplier of 5, which is the rule of the given pair.

Answer: C

ZXCV is related to TRZS. In each given pair the first two letters move back 6 places and the last two move back 3 places, with the alphabet wrapping round. Check: L, K, J, H go to F, E, G, E (L - 6 = F, K - 6 = E, J - 3 = G, H - 3 = E), and F, D, S, A go to Z, X, P, X (F - 6 wraps to Z, D - 6 wraps to X, S - 3 = P, A - 3 wraps to X).

Applying the same rule to ZXCV: Z - 6 = T, X - 6 = R, C - 3 wraps to Z, V - 3 = S, giving TRZS. The other options differ in the first letters or the last letter.

Answer: C

Ink is the material a pen uses to make its mark, so the second word names what the first thing writes with. A pencil makes its mark with lead (graphite), so lead is the word that completes the relation. Paper is what both instruments write on, not what they write with, write is what both of them do, and an eraser is used to remove a pencil mark rather than to make one. The answer is Lead, option (C). Analogy questions are solved by stating the relation in one sentence, here 'the first is a writing instrument and the second is what it writes with', and applying the same sentence to the third word.

Answer: D

In CALM : ZXNO, each letter is replaced by its opposite in the alphabet (C with X, A with Z, L with O, M with N), giving X Z O N, and then the letters are swapped in pairs to give ZXNO. The same rule has to hold for the answer pair.

BAIL : ZYOR fits it: the opposite letters of BAIL are Y Z R O and swapping the pairs gives ZYOR. The other pairs do not follow it: for LIKE the pair-swapped opposite is ROVP and not ROPV, for GAIN it is ZTMR and not TZMR, and for NEAR the code IZVM is the reversed form. So only the fourth pair is related in the same way.

Answer: B

The pair that matches the given one is PEY : LWC.

Give the letters their positions: G, Q, U are 7, 17, 21 and the result U, K, G is 21, 11, 7. Each result letter plus its input letter makes 28 (7 + 21, 17 + 11, 21 + 7). Apply the same rule to PEY, which is 16, 5, 25: 28 − 16 = 12 (L), 28 − 5 = 23 (W) and 28 − 25 = 3 (C), giving LWC.

ENV : BTR, WTH : XWM and QFZ : PEY do not give a constant total of 28 for each letter.

This type of question asks for the same relation between letter positions, so test it by adding the positions of each pair. Here every pair adds to 28, equal to 2 × 14, and the pair PEY and LWC fits it letter by letter. The other options give totals that change from letter to letter.

Answer: C

The missing word is Cite.

The analogy pairs a noun with the verb for what one does with it, by meaning: guidelines are things you implement, and references are things you cite. The instruction “by word meaning” tells you to match the sense, not the sound.

Sight (vision) and site (a location) are homophones of cite and are the sound-alike trap. Plagiarise is related to references but is the wrong relationship: plagiarising is using someone else’s work without citing it, the opposite of what one should do with a reference.

Answer: B

BNHM is related to EQKP. The first pair is related by shifting every letter three places forward in the alphabet: P to S, G to J, D to G, N to Q; the second pair confirms the same rule: L to O, A to D, C to F, K to N. Applying +3 to BNHM gives B to E, N to Q, H to K, M to P, which is EQKP. FPKH, EPKH and FQKP each have a letter that is not three places forward. Both pairs in the question are consistent with a shift of three letters, so the same shift applied to BNHM gives the answer. The options with a shift of four (FQKP) or with mixed shifts are traps built from the same letters.

Answer: A

The word that fits is starve.

The first group climbs in intensity: dry, then arid (very dry), then parched (extremely dry, scorched). The second group must climb the same way in the matter of eating: a diet restricts food, a fast gives it up for a time, and to starve is the extreme state of going without food until one suffers or dies.

Feast is the opposite direction, plenty rather than less. Reject and deny describe refusing in general and do not continue a scale of eating less. Only starve completes the progression.

Answer: A

The answer is Longing.

Courage and bravery are synonyms: both name the quality of facing danger without fear. The analogy therefore asks for a synonym of yearning, a strong, persistent desire for something, and longing means exactly that.

The distractors play on sound rather than meaning. 'Yelling' (shouting) and 'yawning' share the opening letters of yearning but have nothing to do with desire, and 'glaring' means staring angrily or shining harshly. None of them stands to yearning as bravery stands to courage.