CAT 2017 VARC Questions — Slot 1

Framing: A main-purpose question asks you to capture the whole arc of the passage, not just one true line inside it — so trace the argument end to end before choosing.

The passage opens on a note of surprise: humans have been drawing maps for roughly 14,000 years, yet north has sat at the top of maps only "within the last few hundred years." From there it walks through how different cultures pointed their maps in different directions — Chinese maps (emperor at the top), Egyptian maps (east, toward sunrise), Islamic maps (south, toward Mecca), Christian maps (east, toward Eden) — and shows that even explorers like Columbus still thought in terms of an east-up "mappa mundi." The entire arc is setting right a common assumption: that the north-up map is the natural, age-old way to design a map.

Why B is correct: "Corrects the misconception about the way maps are designed" matches that arc exactly. The misconception being corrected is that north-up is how maps were always made.

Why the others fail:

• A — there is no "explanation" being interrogated. The passage is not cross-examining a theory; it is setting the record straight with history.
• C — no method of map-making is criticised. Orientation conventions are described, not attacked.
• D — "myths" is too vague and slightly off-register. The passage deals with a factual misconception about orientation, not with legendary stories.

Answer: B

Framing: This is an EXCEPT question — three options give genuine reasons early maps did not put north at the top; you must find the one that is not such a reason.

Walk through the reasons the passage actually gives for north being avoided:

• "North was rarely put at the top for the simple fact that north is where darkness comes from" — so A is a stated reason.
• Egyptian maps put east at the top because east is "the position of sunrise," and Christian maps put east at the top "towards the Garden of Eden" — religious/positive-direction grounds — so C and D are stated reasons (east and south mattered for religious or positive-direction reasons).

That leaves B — "South was favoured by some emperors." In the Chinese case, the emperor, who lived in the north, was placed at the top of the map, and the emperor looked south because the winds came from there — but the map itself still had north at the top. So "south was favoured" did not push north off the top; if anything, the Chinese map kept north up. B is therefore the exception.

💡 Teacher tip: In an EXCEPT question, test each option against the passage's actual list of reasons. The odd one often describes a culture whose orientation contradicts the trend the question assumes.

Answer: B

Framing: This is a direct retrieval question — find the specific reason the passage gives for early Chinese maps placing north at the top.

The passage is explicit: "in Chinese maps, the Emperor, who lived in the north of the country was always put at the top of the map, with everyone else, his loyal subjects, looking up towards him." Placing the emperor (a northerner) at the top, with subjects "looking up to him," is a gesture of deference and respect — which is exactly B.

Why the others fail:

• A — the passage says the compass was not the reason: "even though they did have compasses at the time, that isn't the reason that they placed north at the top."
• C — the emperor appreciating the southern winds explains why he faced south, not why the map put north at the top.
• D — the opposite is true: south "was considered to be more desirable than deepest darkest north."

Answer: B

Framing: An inference question — you must read between the lines of what the passage says about Columbus and Magellan's orientation, without importing outside knowledge.

The passage says it is "tempting to put it down to European explorers like Christopher Columbus and Ferdinand Megellan," but Brotton argues "these early explorers didn't think of the world like that at all." He then quotes Columbus: "When Columbus describes the world it is in accordance with east being at the top," and "Columbus says he is going towards paradise, so his mentality is from a medieval mappa mundi."

So Columbus oriented his map east-up, toward paradise (the Garden of Eden) — a religious frame of mind. That is C.

Why the others fail:

• A — explicitly contradicted; they did not set a north-up precedent.
• B — the passage says they navigated by the North Star, not the compass.
• D — "with the help of early maps" is never claimed anywhere in the passage.

Answer: C

Framing: This question asks what the passage actually asserts about why modern maps are north-up — so look for a stated cause, not just a rejected one.

The passage raises the question — "So when did everyone get together and decide that north was the top?" — and then knocks down the tempting answer (European explorers). It offers no substitute cause. We are told what did not drive it (explorers' navigation), but never what did; the passage ends on "no one knows what they are doing and where they are going."

Why D is correct: The biggest contributory factor is simply not stated — the question is left open.

Why the others fail: A, B, and C each name a specific "biggest factor" (magnetic north, European explorers, Christian maps) — none of which the passage commits to. In fact B is the very explanation Brotton pushes back against.

💡 Teacher tip: When a passage poses a question and then only dismantles a candidate answer, "not stated" is the safe inference — do not supply a reason the author refused to give.

Answer: D

Framing: The question asks which early map tradition was driven most clearly by a natural phenomenon — so look for the most direct, unambiguous link between an orientation and a physical/astronomical event.

The natural phenomena mentioned in the passage are sunrise, the sun's disappearance, winds, and darkness. The most direct link is the Egyptian one: "In ancient Egyptian times the top of the world was east, the position of sunrise." The orientation is set by an astronomical event — A.

Why the others fail:

• B Islamic maps — driven by the cultural/religious location of Mecca, not a natural phenomenon.
• C Chinese maps — driven by the emperor's residence and status, a political/cultural reason.
• D Christian maps — driven by the religious Garden of Eden, not a natural phenomenon.

The general "north = darkness" idea is a natural-phenomenon reason, but it is not tied to one of these four specific traditions the way sunrise is tied to Egypt.

Answer: A

Let's first pin down the author's core argument in one line: Indian-language texts are best translated into English by Indians, because the cultural dimension — the harder part to get right and to fix — is already native to them, while gaps in English fluency are comparatively easy to repair.

Walking through the passage's logic

1. The baseline requirement: A literary translator needs command of both languages and familiarity with both cultures. So there are two broad axes — language and culture.

2. The Indian translator's situation: For an Indian translating an Indian-language work into English, the cultural material is already familiar. The relative challenge is gaining fluent control of contemporary English.

3. The Western translator's situation: For a Westerner working on Indian-language texts, grammar and vocabulary are not the main problem — interpreting the cultural elements is the major challenge.

4. The decisive comparison: The author states plainly that lapses in language are easier to remedy than flaws of content. In other words, a cultural misstep is harder to detect and correct than a grammatical or lexical one.

5. The conclusion: Since the Indian starts with the harder-to-fix side (culture) already in hand, and the Westerner starts with the harder-to-fix side as their main weakness, translation of Indian texts is better left to Indians.

So the ideal summary must capture both the recommendation (Indians should do these translations) and the specific reasoning (cultural problems are the tougher ones, and Indians are less likely to face them; language issues are comparatively fixable).

Why Option C is correct

C. Indian translators should translate Indian texts into English as their work is less likely to pose cultural problems which are harder to address than the quality of language.

This matches both halves of the argument:

• It states the conclusion — Indians should translate Indian texts into English.
• It gives the precise reason — cultural problems are less likely for Indians and are harder to address than language-quality issues.

It does not overstate, distort, or add anything the passage doesn't say.

Why the other options fall short

• Option A says the Indian and the Westerner face "the same challenges." That directly contradicts the passage: the Westerner's main hurdle is culture, while the Indian's is English fluency. The challenges are different in kind, not identical.

• Option B is close, but it frames the issue as Indians' cultural knowledge "outweighing" a fluency disadvantage. The passage's logic is subtler: language lapses are remediable — they can be fixed — so they aren't really an inherent disadvantage to be outweighed. The point is about repairability, not about one factor simply beating the other.

• Option D centres the Westerner and ends loosely with "Indians remain better placed," without capturing the passage's key reasoning that cultural flaws are harder to repair than language flaws. It misses the comparative point that makes the conclusion work.

💡 Teacher tip: When a passage builds a recommendation on a comparison of difficulty, the correct summary must preserve both the recommendation and the comparison. An option that gives the right conclusion but the wrong (or missing) reason is a trap.

Answer: C

The author is redefining what makes a work "classical" — and doing so by explicitly pushing back against the older, inherited view. Let's pin down the core position before touching the options.

What the author actually says

The author lists three things a classic is not:

1. It is not contemporary — it resists "contemporaneity."
2. It is not universal — it resists "supposed universality."
3. It is not about shared humanity or a unified consciousness — it does not let us "recognize ourselves as already present in the past."

And then the positive claim: a classic gives readers access to radically different forms of human consciousness, thereby expanding what it can mean to be human.

So the author's position has two halves — a rejection of the universal/contemporary/unified, and an affirmation of the different, the particular, the new.

Why C fits

Option C says a classic "explores the new, going beyond the universal, the contemporary, and the notion of a unified human consciousness."

• "Going beyond the universal" matches the rejection of "supposed universality."
• "Going beyond… the contemporary" matches the rejection of "contemporaneity."
• "Going beyond… the notion of a unified human consciousness" matches the rejection of "shared humanity."
• "Exploring the new" captures the positive move — opening up different forms of consciousness and expanding the range of what it means to be human.

C holds both halves of the author's argument together, which is exactly what a good summary must do.

Why the others fail

• Option A says a classic "focuses on the contemporary human condition and a unified experience of human consciousness." This is the mirror image of the passage — the author rejects both the contemporary and the unified. A flips the author's position entirely.

• Option B says a classic "seeks to resist particularity and temporal difference even as it focuses on a common humanity." Again reversed: the author embraces particularity and difference, and rejects common humanity. B turns the affirmations into rejections and vice versa.

• Option D says a classic provides access to a "universal experience" as opposed to "radically different forms of human consciousness." The passage says the exact opposite — the classic provides access to radically different forms of consciousness, not to a universal experience. D inverts the core claim.

💡 Teacher tip: On summary questions, first lock in the author's positive claim in your own words, then scan the options for any that quietly flip it. Here, three of the four options are near-perfect mirror-images of what the author actually says — once you notice the reversal, they fall away quickly.

Answer: C

Let's build this paragraph step by step by watching how each sentence hands off to the next.

Step 1 — Find the opener. A good opener introduces the topic without referring back to anything earlier. Sentence 3 does exactly that: it points to old family albums and notes our long-standing instinct to document our presence in a particular place, on a special occasion, with people who matter. There is no "this", "such", or "it" pointing backwards — it sets the stage by establishing that self-documentation is an old habit.

Step 2 — Sentence 2 follows 3. Sentence 3 says documenting ourselves is a basic, long-standing instinct. Sentence 2 generalises that idea to the present: there is "absolutely nothing new" about framing who we are on a Facebook page. The phrase "nothing new" directly extends the "basic instinct" idea from sentence 3, moving us from old albums to modern social media.

Step 3 — Sentence 1 follows 2. Sentence 1 then names what has actually changed: "This visual turn in social media has merely accentuated this announcing instinct of ours…" The phrase "this announcing instinct" has to inherit from an earlier sentence — and it inherits from the documenting/framing instinct described in 3 and 2. So 1 cannot come before 2; it builds on it.

Step 4 — Sentence 4 follows 1. Sentence 1 says social media has "accentuated" the instinct and given us easy-to-use platforms. Sentence 4 spells out exactly how: we can book our faces, act as celebrities within our friend lists, and broadcast our activities with minimal clicks. It is the concrete illustration of the "accentuation" mentioned in 1.

Step 5 — Sentence 5 closes. Sentence 5 synthesises the whole thread: "What is unprecedented is not the desire to put out newsfeeds related to the self, but the ease with which this broadcast operation can now be executed…" This neatly captures the contrast built across the paragraph — the desire is old (3, 2), the ease is new (1, 4). A closing sentence that summarises the entire line of reasoning fits perfectly here.

Reading the sequence 3 → 2 → 1 → 4 → 5: an old instinct, still nothing new today, merely amplified by social media, here is how, and the real novelty is the ease — not the desire.

💡 Teacher tip: a sentence containing "this X" (as in sentence 1's "this announcing instinct") almost never opens — "this" must inherit from an earlier sentence.

Answer: 32145

Let's find the one sentence that doesn't belong with the other four.

What unifies four of the sentences?

Sentences 1, 2, 3, and 5 all orbit one tight theme: the neuroscience of how physical movement shapes the mind — right down to the level of genes and brain-cell chemistry.

1. Sentence 1 opens the topic: neuroscientists have just begun studying exercise's impact within brain cells — on the genes themselves.
2. Sentence 2 extends that idea inward: "Even there, in the roots of our biology" — the "there" refers back to the genes mentioned in sentence 1 — they've found signs of the body influencing the mind.
3. Sentence 3 supplies the mechanism: moving our muscles produces proteins that travel through the bloodstream into the brain, where they shape our highest thought processes.
4. Sentence 5 closes the loop: "It's only in the past few years that neuroscientists have begun to describe these factors" — "these factors" clearly points back to the proteins from sentence 3, and "neuroscientists" threads back to sentence 1.

So the logical flow is 1 → 2 → 3 → 5: introduce the research → push deeper to the genes → explain the biochemical mechanism → reflect on how recent and awe-inspiring these findings are.

Why sentence 4 is the odd one out

Sentence 4 — "In today's technology-driven, plasma-screened-in world, it's easy to forget that we are born movers…" — is cultural commentary about modern sedentary life. It talks about lifestyle, technology, and how we've engineered movement out of our daily routines.

Notice what it lacks: no neuroscientists, no brain cells, no genes, no proteins, no mechanism. It doesn't connect forward or backward to any of the other four sentences — there's no pronoun or reference that ties it into the chain. It belongs to a completely different paragraph, one about how modern living discourages physical activity — not one about the neuroscience of exercise and the brain.

💡 Teacher tip: In Odd-One-Out, first hunt for the common thread running through four sentences — a shared subject, a chain of pronouns, or a logical sequence. The odd sentence usually shifts to a different topic or scope entirely, even if it sounds thematically adjacent.

Answer: Sentence 4

Framing: A central-idea answer must capture the whole arc of the passage, not just one true line — so trace the argument from opening to conclusion.

The passage opens with economic facts — store closures, bankruptcies, job losses — but that is only the setup. The author then shifts to what the mall meant to people: it was "both" a workplace and a gathering place, "America's public square for the last 60 years," an "agora," and "an ecosystem unto itself, a combination of community and commercialism." The passage closes on Schlesinger's line that malls "were built for patterns of social interaction that increasingly don't exist." That endnote is the real point: a social function that once existed is now disappearing.

Why C is correct: It captures the passage's emotional centre — the mall as a social space whose role has been lost — which is exactly where the argument lands.

Why the others fail:

Answer: C

Framing: This is a rhetorical-purpose question — ask what the author is doing by putting two ideas side by side, not just what the sentence literally says.

The line points out that Amazon — the company that helped kill the mall — now builds its massive distribution centres "not too far from malls the company helped shutter." The author is deliberately placing the destroyer next to what it destroyed. That juxtaposition is meant to underline the irony of the situation.

Why A is correct: The whole force of the line comes from the contrast between Amazon's role in closing malls and its physical proximity to those same dead malls — that is irony.

Why the others fail:

Answer: A

Framing: When a phrase carries a time marker like "once," ask what it is being contrasted with — the answer usually lives in that contrast, not in the bare dictionary meaning.

Two signals matter here. First, the idiom "stumbled over themselves to court" means eagerly competed to attract the brand-name anchor outlets. Second, the word "once" places that eagerness in the past — and the surrounding sentence is about those same outlets now closing en masse. So the phrase points to an eagerness that belonged to an earlier era; today those outlets are in retreat.

Why B is correct: The past-tense "once" signals that developers used to pursue these outlets eagerly but no longer do — the contrast with the present closures is the point.

Why the others fail:

💡 Teacher tip: Always watch for small time words like once, formerly, used to — they almost always signal a contrast with the present.

Answer: B

Framing: The passage itself glosses the metaphor — look at the sentence right around "ecosystem unto itself" to see what the author means by it.

The phrase is explained in the text: the mall was "a combination of community and commercialism, peddling everything you needed and everything you didn't." That is reinforced just before, where Amazon's warehouses are "workplaces, not gathering places. The mall is both." So the mall is an ecosystem because it combines two things — a commercial space and a gathering place.

Why C is correct: It restates the passage's own gloss: the mall was both a commercial space and a gathering place.

Why the others fail:

Answer: C

Framing: A "public square" or "agora" is a shared space where people gather and mingle — so the right answer must capture broad social mixing, not shopping or access rules.

The passage says the mall was "where a huge swath of middle-class America went for far more than shopping," where "goths and grandmothers could somehow walk through the same doors," and where "much of America has found their agora." The point is that the mall was a place for everyone to gather and interact.

Why D is correct: It matches the passage's idea of the mall as a shared gathering space for all kinds of people.

Why the others fail:

Answer: D

Framing: This is a rhetorical-purpose question — the "perfume clouds" line is not there to catalogue smells; ask what the author is trying to make the reader feel or do.

The line sits inside a direct address: "Think of your mall. Or think of the one you went to as a kid. Think of the perfume clouds in the department stores. The fountains splashing below the skylights. The cinnamon wafting from the food court." The author is summoning a sensory memory to make the reader feel the mall — nostalgic picture-painting.

Why A is correct: The imagery is meant to evoke memories by painting a vivid picture of the mall.

Why the others fail:

Answer: A

A comparison question asks us to find the basis of the analogy — what specifically makes the printing press deserve to be called "the Internet of its day."

The museum director calls the press "the Internet of its day — at least as influential as the iPhone." Right after that, the passage lists what earned it that label: one press could produce 3,000 pages a day, ordinary people could travel with maps, medical knowledge spread more freely, the clergy's monopoly on scripture was broken, and pamphlets helped stir the American colonies to revolt. The common thread across all these examples is the rapid spread of information and ideas to ordinary people — exactly what option A says.

Why the others fail:

• B says the press was "new and revolutionary technology," which is true but too generic. It tells us that the press was revolutionary without explaining why it deserves the Internet comparison specifically.
• C focuses on "access to thousands of books" and encouraging reading. But the analogy is about the flow of information and ideas, not about a book count or a reading habit.
• D mentions "pamphlets and literature in several languages." The passage never says anything about multiple languages.

Answer: A

An EXCEPT question asks us to find the one thing the printing press did not do. The safest approach is to check each option against the passage and eliminate the three that are supported.

The multitasking flavour actually belongs to the iPhone — the device that lets you work, dine, travel, and socialize from one screen. It is never tied to Gutenberg's invention.

Answer: D

This is a direct retrieval question: what did Steve Jobs predict about reading once the iPhone arrived?

The passage states: "Not long after Steve Jobs introduced his iPhone, he said the bound book was probably headed for history's attic." A "bound book" is a printed book, and "headed for history's attic" means heading toward obsolescence — becoming a thing of the past. That is exactly option C.

Why the others fail:

• A — switching from reading on the Internet to reading on iPhones — is never mentioned as Jobs's claim.
• B — losing interest in historical and traditional classics — is not stated anywhere.
• D — e-book production would eventually fall — is the opposite of what Jobs implied. He expected the bound book to decline, which would mean e-books rising, not falling. In fact, the passage notes e-books did see "rapid growth" before the print comeback.

Answer: C

The question asks which fact the author uses to justify his uncertainty that the iPhone can match what the printing press did for "religion and democracy" — that is, for freeing minds and societies.

Right after the quoted line, the author writes: "The hope of the iPhone, and the Internet in general, was that it would free people in closed societies. But the failure of the Arab Spring, and the continued suppression of ideas in North Korea, China and Iran, has not borne that out." The key evidence is that closed societies are still suppressing ideas and free speech — so the iPhone has not yet done what the press did. That is option C.

💡 Teacher tip: When a question asks what justifies a specific doubt, look for the evidence the author gives immediately after that doubt is expressed — not just any downside mentioned anywhere in the passage.

Why the others fail:

• A — the rise of religious groups — is never discussed in the passage.
• B — trolling and narcissism — is listed as a downside of the iPhone, but it is not the evidence the author uses for his doubt about freeing closed societies and advancing democracy.
• D — decline in reading habits — is mentioned, but again it is not the specific reason given for the religion-and-democracy uncertainty.

Answer: C

This question asks for the reason the author connects the French and American revolutions to the printing press.

The passage gives two linked pieces of evidence: the American colonies were "stirred by pamphlets from a version of that same press," and "it's hard to imagine the French or American revolutions without those enlightened voices in print." The mechanism is clear — the press rapidly spread enlightened political ideas about freedom and democracy to wide audiences, and those ideas helped fuel the revolutions. That is option B.

Why the others fail:

• A — maps helping Europeans travel and settle — concerns the maps mentioned earlier in the passage, not the revolutionary-ideas mechanism behind the revolutions.
• C — religious freedom via breaking the clergy's monopoly — is something the press did do, but it concerns religion, not the cause of the democratic revolutions the question asks about.
• D — "revolutionary strategies and opinions" — the word "strategies" overstates the point. The passage is about enlightened ideas of freedom reaching people, not tactical battle plans.

Answer: B

A main-conclusion question demands the whole arc of the argument, not one true line. Trace the author's reasoning end to end.

Throughout the passage, the author keeps measuring the iPhone against the printing press and finds it wanting on the very thing that mattered most. The Geneva museum "makes a strong case that the printing press opened more minds than anything else," and the closing line delivers the verdict: "I'm not sure if the world changed for the better with the iPhone — as it did with the printing press — or merely changed." The standard of judgment is "opening minds," and on that standard the iPhone has not yet matched the press. That is option B.

Why the others fail:

• A — advantages outweighed by disadvantages — the author is not doing a simple pro-and-con tally. His benchmark is whether the iPhone opened minds and changed the world for the better, not whether its drawbacks outnumber its perks.
• C — "changed society too rapidly" — speed is never the criticism. The author's doubt is about depth and direction, not pace.
• D — "more wasteful" and linking daydreaming to surfing — this is a misread. The loss of daydreaming is mentioned as one side-effect, not as the passage's conclusion. The author never calls the iPhone "wasteful."

Answer: B

Let's build this paragraph link by link, starting with the sentence that can open and then following the thread of ideas.

1. Find the opener — Sentence 5. "Just as life has death as its opposite, so is tradition by default the opposite of innovation." This is a self-contained analogy: it sets up the central tension of the paragraph — tradition versus innovation. There is no pronoun pointing back, no phrase like "this" or "such" that depends on an earlier sentence, and no concept that needs prior introduction. That makes it a strong candidate to open.

2. Sentence 4 follows 5. Sentence 5 frames tradition as the opposite of innovation. Sentence 4 then complicates that neat opposition: "It is now a truism to say that traditions are not handed down unchanged, but are invented." In other words, tradition actually contains innovation — it is not a fixed, frozen thing. The phrase "It is now a truism to say…" reads naturally as the next beat after the opening analogy.

3. Sentence 1 follows 4. Sentence 4 introduces the idea of traditions being "handed down." Sentence 1 picks that exact phrase up and deepens it: "The process of handing down implies not a passive transfer, but some contestation in defining what exactly is to be handed down." The keyword "handed down" ties 1 directly to 4, and the thought moves from the general claim to its inner mechanism — contestation over what gets passed on.

4. Sentence 3 follows 1. Sentence 1 says handing down involves "contestation in defining what exactly is to be handed down." Sentence 3 explains how that contestation happens: "Every generation selects what it requires from the past and makes its innovations, some more than others." The word "selects" is the concrete answer to "defining what exactly is to be handed down."

5. Sentence 2 closes the chain. Sentence 2 is the specific illustration: "Wherever Western scholars have worked on the Indian past, the selection is even more apparent and the inventing of a tradition much more recognizable." Notice how both key ideas — "selection" (from sentence 3) and "inventing of a tradition" (from sentence 4) — are inherited here. A sentence that draws on two earlier ideas is a natural closer, not an opener.

Read straight through — 5 → 4 → 1 → 3 → 2 — and the paragraph moves cleanly from the abstract opposition (tradition vs. innovation), to the general claim (traditions are invented through contestation and selection), to a concrete case (Western scholarship on the Indian past).

💡 Teacher tip: The opener of a jumble never refers back to something unstated. An analogy like sentence 5, with no pronoun and no back-reference, is a classic candidate to open. Conversely, a sentence that reuses keywords from two earlier sentences is almost always a late sentence, often the last.

Answer: 54132

Let's first read all five sentences and ask: what is the shared thread that ties four of them together?

Sentences 1, 2, 4, and 5 all describe how researchers study babies' reactions to speech — their method of observation.

1. Sentence 1 opens the topic: researchers who study children's language spend a lot of time watching how babies react to the speech around them.
2. Sentence 2 extends that method: they film adults and babies interacting, then carefully examine the footage for signs of understanding.
3. Sentence 4 zooms in on those "signs" from sentence 2 — they are subtle movements of the eyes, head, or hands.
4. Sentence 5 picks up "them" (= the subtle signs from sentence 4) and explains why filming matters: you would miss these signs just sitting with the child, but re-watching a recording lets you spot them.

So the coherent paragraph runs 1 → 2 → 4 → 5, a tight chain held together by the observation method and the pronoun links ("the signs" → "them").

Why sentence 3 is the odd one out:

They believe that babies begin to react to language from the very moment they are born.

This sentence is not about method at all. It states a belief or conclusion about when language reaction begins — a claim about timing. The other four sentences never assert when babies start reacting; they only describe how researchers try to detect whatever reactions occur. Sentence 3 shifts the register from "here is what they do to observe" to "here is what they believe to be true," so it cannot sit inside the observation-method cluster.

💡 Teacher tip: In Odd-One-Out, look for the sentence that changes the kind of statement being made. Here four sentences are procedural (what researchers do), while one is propositional (what researchers believe) — that switch in register is the giveaway.

Answer: Sentence 3

A central-point question asks you to capture the overall thrust of the paragraph, not just one true detail — so trace the argument end to end before choosing.

What the first paragraph actually argues

The paragraph opens by saying the economic outlook for a host city is "less than rosy," and frames the core challenge as converting several billion dollars in operating costs into "a basis for long-term economic returns." It then explains that the Games' own revenue ($4–5 billion) mostly leaves the city — the "lion's share" goes to the IOC, National Olympic Committees, and International Sports Federations. So any benefit to the host must come indirectly, through three channels: advertising ("far from certain"), infrastructure (conditional on the city's condition and planning), and facility reuse ("dubious at best").

The through-line is clear: benefits are not immediate or guaranteed, and if they arrive at all, they arrive indirectly and over the long term. That is exactly what option C says.

Why the other options fail

• A claims the benefits are "shared equally among the three organising committees." The passage says the opposite in two ways: the lion's share goes to the committees rather than the host city, and nothing is described as "equal."
• B says benefits come "mostly through advertisements and ticket sales." But the advertising effect is explicitly called "far from certain," and ticket sales are never identified as the mechanism of benefit.
• D says benefits are "eroded by expenditure." This introduces a different idea — erosion by spending — whereas the paragraph's point is about whether and when returns accrue, not about costs eating into them.

Answer: C

This is a cause/reason question — it asks why Olympic sports facilities end up under-used after the Games. Go to the specific lines where the author discusses facility reuse and pull out the reasons actually given.

What the passage says about post-Games facilities

The author is concrete and specific: velodromes and natatoriums are "usually doomed to near vacancy," 100,000-seat Olympic stadiums are "problematic," Beijing's Bird's Nest "sits virtually empty," and Sydney's Olympic Stadium "costs some $30 million a year to operate." The two structural problems driving this are scale — these venues are far larger than any everyday use requires — and operating cost — they are expensive simply to keep running. Option A captures both.

💡 Teacher tip: When a question asks "because," look for the stated cause, not a plausible-sounding one. The passage gives you numbers and examples for a reason — they point to the actual mechanism.

Why the other options fail

• B blames "location away from the city centre." The passage never mentions location or access as a factor.
• C says "the authorities do not adapt them to local conditions." This is not stated; the problem is structural — the buildings are too big and too costly — not a failure of administrative adaptation.
• D claims facilities "become outdated having been built with little planning and under time pressure." Time-pressured planning is mentioned, but as a general problem with Olympics planning, not as the reason venues sit empty. The word "outdated" is never used or implied.

Answer: A

This is an EXCEPT question — three of the options are burdens the author does name, and one is a burden the author never raises. Your job is to find the one that is absent from the passage.

Check each option against the text

• A — diverting scarce urban land from more productive uses: the author asks, "are they the best use of precious urban real estate?" and notes "urban land is generally scarce and growing scarcer." This burden is named.
• B — demolition of residential structures: the passage states "Residential areas often are razed and citizens relocated (without adequate preparation or compensation)." This burden is named.
• C — finances that could be better used elsewhere: the author writes, "There are, after all, other productive uses that can be made of vanishing fiscal resources." This burden is named.
• D — visitor influx straining urban infrastructure: the passage never mentions an influx of visitors or strain from tourism during the Games. The burdens it lists concern land, residents, and money — not visitor pressure.

Since D is the one burden the author does not raise, it is the correct answer to the EXCEPT question.

💡 Teacher tip: In an EXCEPT question, don't just find a option that sounds plausible — verify that the passage actually says three of the four things. The odd one out must be genuinely absent, not merely less emphasized.

Answer: D

A "sums up the argument" question asks for the main conclusion, not a supporting detail or a piece of evidence. So trace what Ehrlich and Raven actually assert in their 1969 paper, not merely what they observed.

What the passage says

The passage lays out two linked claims from the 1969 paper:

1. Gene flow was "not as predictable and ubiquitous as Mayr and his cohort maintained," so divergence between neighbouring groups is "probably common."
2. The headline assertion: "isolation and gene flow were less important to evolutionary divergence than natural selection."

The second claim is the bigger move — it elevates natural selection above isolation as the driver of speciation. That is the thrust of their argument.

Why C is correct

Option C — "While a factor, isolation was not as important to speciation as natural selection" — captures exactly that headline claim. It also preserves the nuance: isolation is a factor, just not the dominant one.

Why the others fail

💡 Teacher tip: When an option restates a detail of a study (its evidence) rather than its conclusion, it is usually wrong for a "sums up the argument" question.

Answer: C

An EXCEPT question asks you to find the one statement the passage does not support. Three of the four options will be grounded in the text; the odd one out is your answer.

Checking each option against the passage

• A — Gene flow contributes to evolutionary divergence. The passage treats gene flow as a real force in divergence, just weaker than natural selection. Consistent.
• C — Evolutionary changes unfold imperceptibly over time. The opening sentence says scientists thought diversity "reflected evolutionary changes that unfolded imperceptibly, over millions of years." Consistent.
• D — Checkerspot butterflies are known to exhibit speciation while living in close proximity. The passage describes three groups on just 50 acres that "rarely interacted despite their very close proximity," which is exactly this idea. Consistent.
• B — The Population Bomb questioned dominant ideas about species diversity. The passage mentions The Population Bomb only to identify Ehrlich as its author. It never says that book addressed species diversity. The challenge to Mayr came from the 1969 paper, not from the book.

Why B is the answer

The passage uses The Population Bomb purely as a biographical label for Ehrlich. It attributes the challenge to Mayr's speciation ideas to the 1969 Ehrlich and Raven paper, not to the 1968 book. So B is unsupported — the statement we must pick as NOT true.

💡 Teacher tip: When a passage drops a famous title next to a person's name, check whether the passage actually ties that work to the claim being made — often it is just an identifier.

Answer: B

This is a "why does the author include this?" question. Look at the structure of the passage: the author stages one view, then a rival view. That structure itself is the clue to the author's purpose.

What the passage does

• First, it presents Mayr's account (1940s): physical separation over geologic time drives speciation; without separation, gene flow is relentless.
• Then it presents Ehrlich and Raven's challenge (1960s): gene flow is not so predictable, and natural selection matters more than isolation.

By placing two competing explanations of how new species form side by side, the author is showing that scientists disagree about the causes of speciation.

Why C is correct

Option C — "the causes of speciation are debated by scientists" — matches this structure exactly. Mayr offers one cause (isolation); Ehrlich and Raven offer another (natural selection). The author's point is that this is a live debate.

Why the others fail

• A — "evolution is a sensitive and controversial topic" is far too broad. The passage is about one mechanism within evolution (how speciation happens), not evolution as a whole, and nothing here suggests it is "sensitive."
• B — The passage never says Ehrlich and Raven's ideas won wide acceptance. It calls their paper "classic," but that is not the same as saying scientists broadly agreed.
• D — The butterflies are an example supporting Ehrlich and Raven's argument, not "the best" example, and they are not the reason the author brings in Mayr as well.

💡 Teacher tip: For "author discusses X to demonstrate" questions, look at what the juxtaposition of the named figures shows — the contrast is usually the point.

Answer: C

Let's first pin down the author's core position before testing the options.

The paragraph's main idea

The author is arguing that global warming does not create storms, but it makes them more destructive. The reasoning is a causal chain:

1. Warming seas evaporate more easily, feeding energy to storm fronts.
2. Warming air holds more water vapour (the Clausius-Clapeyron relation: roughly 3% more atmospheric moisture per half-degree of warming).
3. So the skies fill faster and have more to dump.
4. Separately, sea levels have risen about 20 cm because warming has melted glaciers and thermally expanded seawater, producing a greater storm surge.

So the scope is: warming → more moisture and higher seas → storms carry more destructive energy. A correct summary must capture both the mechanism and the conclusion without adding anything the passage doesn't say.

Why option C fits

Option C follows the author's chain end to end: warming melts glaciers and expands seawater; this raises sea levels and enables more water vapour to fill the air faster; the result is that modern storms contain more destructive energy. That is exactly the passage's argument — the moisture mechanism and the sea-level mechanism feeding into greater destructive power.

Why the others fail

• Option A says Harvey and global warming are unrelated. This directly contradicts the passage, which states warming "makes them wetter and more powerful." The author's whole point is that a relationship exists.

• Option B starts well — warming doesn't breed storms but makes them more destructive — but then adds that the Clausius-Clapeyron equation "cannot predict the scale of damage storms might wreak." The passage never says this. It uses the equation only to explain why atmospheric moisture increases with warming, not to assess its predictive limits. This is an unsupported addition.

• Option D hedges by saying more moisture "may not be true of all storms." The passage presents the warming-to-moisture mechanism as a general physical relationship, not as something that only sometimes applies. That qualification is the author's own position nowhere in the text.

Answer: C

Let's build this paragraph link by link, starting with the sentence that can open the passage.

Step 1 — Find the opener. Sentence 5 states the headline finding: DNA from Bronze Age skeletons suggests the black plague may have emerged as early as 3,000 BCE, long before the famous mid-1300s epidemic. This is a natural opener because it introduces the topic — the ancient origins of the plague — and contains no back-reference to any earlier sentence. Every other sentence presupposes something already established, so none of them can lead.

Step 2 — What supports the opening claim? Sentence 4 supplies the evidence behind sentence 5: an analysis of DNA fragments from 101 Bronze Age skeletons, seven of which tested positive for Yersinia pestis, the bacterium that causes the disease. The phrase "the disease" in sentence 4 looks straight back to "the black plague" in sentence 5. So the order so far is 5 → 4.

Step 3 — A further conclusion from the study. Sentence 1 begins "The study suggests…", which refers to the analysis just described in sentence 4. It adds a new conclusion: the disease may not have spread very intensely, but it could have driven human migrations across Europe and Asia. This introduces the migration idea that the rest of the paragraph will develop. So we now have 5 → 4 → 1.

Step 4 — Supporting detail for the migration link. Sentence 2 gives a concrete piece of evidence: the oldest sample came from an individual who lived in southeast Russia about 5,000 years ago. This detail feeds naturally into the migration discussion by locating one of the samples geographically and chronologically. Order: 5 → 4 → 1 → 2.

Step 5 — Close the loop. Sentence 3 ties everything together: the ages of the skeletons correspond to a time of mass exodus from today's Russia and Ukraine into western Europe and central Asia, suggesting a pandemic could have driven these migrations. Two signals confirm it must come last:

• "these migrations" refers back to the migrations introduced in sentence 1.
• "Russia and Ukraine" picks up the "southeast Russia" detail from sentence 2.

So the final sequence is 5 → 4 → 1 → 2 → 3.

💡 Teacher tip: In a jumble, watch for pronouns and phrases like "the disease," "the study," and "these migrations" — each one points backward to something already named, which tells you exactly which sentence must come before it.

Answer: 54123

Let's build this paragraph link by link, starting with the sentence that can open the passage and then following the thread of ideas.

Step 1 — Find the opener

Sentence 1 is the natural opener: it announces a broad breakthrough — scientists editing genes in a human embryo for the first time — and ends with a forward-looking note about hopes for use "outside laboratory conditions." Nothing in it refers back to an unnamed disease, paper, or mutation, so it needs no prior context. Every other sentence either names a specific condition, a specific journal, or a specific mutation, so each of them depends on something earlier.

Step 2 — Move from the general breakthrough to the specific instance

Sentence 5 follows 1. Sentence 1 says scientists repaired a genetic mutation; sentence 5 supplies the concrete case — the results published in Nature this week, fixing a mutation that thickens the heart muscle, a condition called hypertrophic cardiomyopathy. This is a classic general-to-specific move: the headline claim, then the actual paper behind it.

Step 3 — Describe the disease just introduced

Now that sentence 5 has named the cardiac condition, sentence 2 naturally elaborates on its impact: "The cardiac disease causes sudden death in otherwise healthy young athletes and affects about one in 500 people overall." The phrase "the cardiac disease" points straight back to hypertrophic cardiomyopathy, locking 5 → 2.

Step 4 — Explain the cause of that disease

Sentence 4 comes next. Sentence 2 told us what the disease does; sentence 4 tells us why it happens — "It is caused by a mutation in a particular gene…" The pronoun "It" cleanly resumes "the cardiac disease," and the sentence introduces the key idea of a mutated gene and how a child inherits the condition. So 2 → 4.

Step 5 — Close with the payoff of fixing the mutation

With the genetic cause now on the table (sentence 4), sentence 3 provides the closing benefit: "Correcting the mutation in the gene would not only ensure that the child is healthy but also prevents transmission of the mutation to future generations." This ties back beautifully to the opener's "fuelling hopes" — it explains why the breakthrough matters. So 4 → 3.

Final sequence

1 → 5 → 2 → 4 → 3: the breakthrough, then the specific paper, then the disease, then its genetic cause, then the benefit of correcting it.

💡 Teacher tip: In a para jumble, watch for the general-to-specific pattern. A broad headline sentence often opens, and the sentences that name a concrete study, disease, or mechanism follow in a narrowing chain — each one picking up a noun or pronoun from the sentence before it.

Answer: 15243

Let's find the one sentence that doesn't belong by first identifying the common thread running through the other four.

The unifying idea

Four of the five sentences together tell a connected story about Mars — how it lost its early atmosphere and water, and what still remains. Notice the evidentiary spine that links them:

1. Sentence 5 opens the paragraph by introducing the research frame: a recent study on how Mars lost much of its early water, plus another study indicating some liquid water remains.
2. Sentence 4 supplies the supporting data: NASA's MAVEN orbiter shows solar storms stripped away most of Mars's once-thick atmosphere.
3. Sentence 2 explains the mechanism behind that data — solar particles colliding with atmospheric molecules, knocking them into space or charging them so the solar wind sweeps them away.
4. Sentence 3 closes the arc on what is left: most remaining water is frozen or buried, though some liquid water may survive in underground aquifers.

Read in the order 5 → 4 → 2 → 3, the thread is tight: a study is announced → data is cited → the mechanism is unpacked → the present-day residue is described. Each sentence picks up the evidentiary frame (a study, NASA data, a physical process) and carries it forward.

Why Sentence 1 is the odd one out

Sentence 1 — "The water that made up ancient lakes and perhaps an ocean was lost" — shares the keyword "water" with the cluster, which makes it look like it belongs. But that is a surface resemblance only.

• It has no Mars frame — the planet is never named.
• It cites no study, no data source, no instrument like MAVEN.
• It offers no mechanism — no solar wind, no atmospheric stripping.
• It is a bare conclusion that floats free of the evidentiary narrative the other four are building.

The other four sentences are held together not just by the topic of water loss, but by a shared investigative structure: study → data → mechanism → remaining state. Sentence 1 contributes none of that structure; it simply asserts a loss without any of the framing the paragraph relies on.

💡 Teacher tip: In odd-one-out, the stray sentence often shares a keyword with the cluster (here, "water") but lacks the cluster's evidentiary frame — a study, data, a mechanism. Test for the frame, not just the topic word.

Answer: Sentence 1