Q&A: practice questions with answers

Concept: 'Good' + skill/activity takes the preposition 'at'.

1. Correct: She is very good at dancing.
2. 'good for' = beneficial (Exercise is good for health); 'good of' = kind (It was good of you).

Trick: Ability words take 'at': good at, bad at, expert at, clever at, quick at.

Answer: (B) at

Concept: Meticulous = extremely careful about small details.

1. Opposite = careless and untidy → Sloppy.
2. Orderly, Detailed, Categorised are close in meaning to 'meticulous', not opposite.

Trick: In antonym questions, first strike out options that are synonyms – here three of the four are.

Answer: (B) Sloppy

Concept: A false statement that damages someone's reputation = slanderous.

1. Slander = spoken defamation; libel = written defamation.
2. Adulatory = full of excessive praise; flattery = insincere praise (and a noun); adorable = lovable.

Trick: Grammar check: 'a ___ statement' needs an adjective – 'flattery' is a noun, so it is out at once.

Answer: (A) slanderous

Concept: Present perfect expresses past experience at an unspecified time; 'before' fits it.

1. 'He has won the elections before' – correct tense and adverb.
2. 'but this time the situation is different' – simple present for a present state, correct.
3. No part contains an error.

Yaad rakhein: Present perfect cannot take a definite past time (yesterday, in 2019), but it can take 'before, ever, never, already, just'.

Answer: (B) No error

Concept: Fade = to grow faint and slowly disappear from view.

1. Opposite = to come into view → Appear.
2. Accept, Admire, Achieve have nothing to do with becoming visible.

Trick: Fade ↔ Appear; Vanish ↔ Emerge – visibility pairs are common in SSC.

Answer: (D) Appear

Concept: 'Like two peas in a pod' = very similar in looks, habits or opinions.

1. The clue 'they always agree on everything' shows they think alike.
2. Other options are not idioms.

Trick: Idioms are fixed – the words cannot be changed. Similar idiom: 'birds of a feather' (people of the same kind).

Answer: (D) two peas in a pod

Concept: Candid = frank and truthful in speech.

1. Closest meaning → Honest.
2. Reserved and Hesitant are the opposite of open; Deceptive is the opposite of truthful.

Trick: Candid ≈ frank, outspoken, straightforward. Note: 'candid photo' = an unposed, natural photo.

Answer: (A) Honest

Concept: Adjective + ly; no extra 'e' is added unless the adjective already ends in 'e'.

1. awkward + ly = awkwardly (not 'awkwardely').
2. mortal + ly, frank + ly, deliberate + ly – all correct.

Trick: Write the base adjective first, then just attach -ly: the 'e' in 'deliberately' comes from 'deliberate'.

Answer: (D) Awkwardely

Concept: Cause and result are joined by 'so + adjective + that'.

1. 'It was that cold' is non-standard → should be 'It was so cold'.
2. Corrected first part: 'It was so cold' – the rest stays as it is.

Trick: Remember the pairs: so … that, such … that, too … to. 'That' before an adjective is informal.

Answer: (A) It was that cold

Concept: 'Under the weather' = slightly ill.

1. 'feeling unwell' → 'feeling under the weather'.
2. Under the sun = anywhere at all; under the radar = unnoticed; under pressure = stressed.

Yaad rakhein: Health idioms: under the weather (unwell), fit as a fiddle (very healthy), on the mend (recovering).

Answer: (A) under the weather

Concept: The blank must show the fans' feeling after a negative event.

1. Tickets sold out in minutes → many fans got none.
2. Their feeling = disappointed (sad because a hope failed).

Trick: Match the tone: a negative cause ('sold out') needs a negative result word; 'satisfied' and 'clear' are ruled out instantly.

Answer: (B) disappointed

Concept: Find the misspelt word in the sentence and choose its correct form.

1. 'horrizon' is wrong → horizon (single r).
2. casting, tranquil, across are already correct; the options misspell them.

Trick: Options that add a letter to an already-correct word (caesting, tranquill, accross) are traps.

Answer: (B) horizon

Concept: Grumpy = bad-tempered, easily annoyed.

1. Closest meaning → Irritable.
2. Jubilant = very happy (opposite); Competent = capable; Fascinating = very interesting.

Yaad rakhein: Grumpy ≈ cranky, grouchy, cross, peevish.

Answer: (A) Irritable

Concept: Credible = believable, trustworthy.

1. Opposite = cannot be trusted → Unreliable.
2. Trap: 'credulous' means too ready to believe – related root, not the opposite.

Trick: Credible (worth believing) vs Credulous (believes easily) – a classic SSC confusion pair.

Answer: (B) Unreliable

Concept: 'Get + adjective/past participle' shows a change of state: get lost, get tired, get wet.

1. The sentence is in past tense ('found their way') → got lost.
2. 'had lost' needs an object; 'gone lost' and 'held lost' are not English.

Trick: Fixed pairs to remember: get lost, lose one's way, find one's way.

Answer: (C) got

Concept: Speed/rate expressions take 'at'.

1. 'rose at a very fast rate' is the standard phrase.
2. about, of, beside do not fit before 'a rate'.

Trick: at a rate, at a speed, at a pace, at a price – all take 'at'.

Answer: (D) at

Concept: 'Leading up to' = the period just before an event.

1. 'the four years leading up to the Boston Tea Party'.
2. 'following' would mean after the event; lagging/trailing don't pair with 'up to'.

Trick: Read the next words: '___ up to' → 'leading' is the only natural verb.

Answer: (C) leading

Concept: The passage itself repeats the needed verb.

1. Later in the sentence: 'the year the tea was dumped'.
2. So the amount 'dumped in the harbour' – tea thrown into the water at the Boston Tea Party.

Trick: In cloze tests, scan the rest of the passage; the answer word is often echoed nearby.

Answer: (D) dumped

Concept: The argument: supply rose but customers did not increase.

1. Population 'didn't expand much' = did not grow much.
2. condense, shrink, constrict mean 'become smaller' – with 'didn't' they would wrongly suggest growth.

Trick: Negative + word: check the final meaning. 'didn't expand' = stayed nearly the same – matches 'without more customers'.

Answer: (C) expand

Concept: The adjective must describe a very large, sudden increase.

1. 55 → 370 tonnes = almost seven times in four years.
2. Such a rise is dramatic; mundane, dull and understated suggest something small or ordinary.

Trick: Number clues in a passage (seven times!) usually point to strong words like dramatic, sharp, steep.

Answer: (A) dramatic