CAT 2023 VARC Questions — Slot 3

A "paradox" question wants the twist where a plan backfires on the very thing it was meant to protect — so name the goal, then name the unintended result.

The goal: patrimony laws were, in the passage's words, "intended to protect future archaeological discoveries against Western imperialist designs."

The backfire: the author's own survey of 90 countries shows that "the number of discovered sites diminishes sharply after a country passes a cultural property law" — of 222 listed sites, "all but 21 were discovered before the passage of cultural property laws."

So laws meant to safeguard cultural property ended up reducing new archaeological discoveries. That is exactly option D.

Why the others fail:

• A (hurt auctioneers like Sotheby's): Sotheby's returning a statue is just an opening illustration; the passage never says the laws damaged auction business.
• B (neglect of historical sites): "Neglect" is vague and off-target — the paradox is that new finds stop happening, not that known sites are ignored.
• C (withholding treasure from museums): The argument isn't about museums being starved; it's about discoveries drying up.

Answer: D

This is an inference question — find the line that ties archaeological sites to a concrete benefit for the source country.

The passage spells it out when listing the survey's implications: new discoveries "typically increase tourism and enhance cultural pride." So source countries value their sites largely because the finds boost tourism (and national pride). That is option D.

Why the others fail:

• A (symbol of Western imperialism): Imperialism appears as the history of looting, not as a reason the sites are prized.
• B (subject to strict patrimony laws): Being under such laws is the cause of the problem in the passage, not a reason the sites matter.
• C (generate funds for future discoveries): The passage argues the opposite — strict laws reduce the incentives and funding for exploration.

Answer: D

An "undermine the central idea" question asks you to break the author's core cause-and-effect chain. So state that chain first, then find the option that snaps it.

The author's chain: strict patrimony law → foreign governments, NGOs and universities lose the reward of holding, displaying and studying what they dig up → they stop investing in overseas exploration → discoveries fall, especially in poor countries that can't fund their own digs.

To undermine this, you need a fact showing discoveries would still happen in poor countries despite the laws.

• Option C — "UNESCO finances archaeological research in poor, but archaeologically-rich source countries" — does exactly that. If an outside body pays for the digs regardless of who owns the finds, poor countries keep making discoveries, and the "strict law → fewer finds" claim collapses. ✓

Why the others fail:

• A (affluent countries can fund their own digs): The author already concedes this ("to the extent that source countries can fund their own archaeological projects... sites may still be discovered"), and it only covers rich countries, leaving the poor-country argument intact.
• B (museums in poor countries can display the finds): This is about displaying finds, not about whether finds happen at all.
• D (Western countries apologise for past looting): Irrelevant to the discovery-incentive argument.

Answer: C

This is an EXCEPT question: three options will echo the author's advice, and one will contradict it. First, gather the advice.

The author tells poor but artefact-rich countries to narrow their patrimony laws, attract foreign-funded exploration, let foreigners share in studying and displaying the finds (that reward is what draws investment), and follow China's model of dropping the restrictive law and embracing international collaboration.

Three options simply restate that advice:

• B — let foreign countries analyse and exhibit the finds = the "opportunities to hold, display and study" that the author says drives investment.
• C — motivate other countries to finance exploration = the author's central recommendation.
• D — adopt China's strategy = the model the author explicitly praises.

Option A — "fund institutes in other countries to undertake archaeological exploration in the source country" — reverses the money flow. The author wants the poor source country to attract foreign investment, not to pay foreign institutes out of its own limited pocket. Nothing in the passage recommends that, so A is the exception.

Answer: A

This is an odd-one-out: four sentences form one news story; one belongs to a different subject. Find the shared thread first.

The four that belong together tell the story of the death of the last speaker of the Bo language:

• 4 is the lead: the last speaker of an ancient tribal language has died in the Andaman Islands, breaking a 65,000-year link to one of the world's oldest cultures.
• 3 names the language: Bo, one of the ten Great Andamanese languages, with pre-Neolithic roots.
• 1 names the person: Boa Senior, who lived through the 2004 tsunami and the Japanese occupation, was the last native fluent in Bo.
• 5 gives the human close: though researchers studied the language, Boa Senior spent her final years with no one to talk to in her mother tongue.

Read 4 → 3 → 1 → 5, it is a single, coherent obituary-style piece.

Sentence 2 — about the general indigenous population collapsing since the British made the islands a penal colony in 1858 — shifts to broad demographic and colonial history. It never touches the language or its last speaker, so it is the outsider.

Answer: 2

A para-summary: name the paragraph's core point and scope, then choose the option that reflects both without adding or dropping anything.

Main point. Once the pests were gone, the island's life revived. Burrowing birds that had barely clung on (prions, petrels) are now increasing; their droppings enrich the soil; taller plants grow back and shelter the birds from predatory skuas — "this wonderful feedback loop" — and orchids and herbs are spreading everywhere.

Why B is right. "In the absence of pests, life on the island is now protected, and there has been a revival of a variety of birds and plants" states exactly this — cause (pests gone) and effect (birds and plants revive).

Why the others fail.

• A is wrong twice over: it says the recovery happens "despite the presence of pests" (the pests are gone), and it foregrounds "predatory birds" when the rise is of prions and petrels, not predators.
• C is too narrow — it omits both the cause (pest removal) and the self-reinforcing revival.
• D is too generic ("environmental protection") when the specific driver is the eradication of pests.

Answer: B

This is an EXCEPT question about the causes of climate-policy failure the passage lists — three options will be among them, one will not.

The obstacles the passage names: the "vested interest in the oil economy" (oil exporters and the US superpower); power utilities "sabotaging decentralised solar power generation"; non-European viewpoints being "drowned out" and given only lip service; and colonialist intellectual discourse "dominating" the world's thinking. These map onto:

• A — the greed of those benefiting from non-renewables,
• B — the global dominance of oil economies and their politics,
• C — the marginalised status of non-European views of nature.

Option D — "the decentralised characteristic of renewable energy resources like solar power" — is not given as a cause of failure. In the passage, decentralised solar is the threatened alternative that utilities attack; its decentralised nature is why utilities fight it, not itself a reason policies fail. So D is the exception.

Answer: D

This question hinges on the reviewer's stated reason for calling Gaia "who." Find that reason, then pick the fact that knocks it out.

The reviewer says it openly: "I use the pronoun 'who' knowingly, because Ghosh has quoted many non-European sources... to question the prevalent way of looking at Earth as an inert object to be exploited." So the entire basis for the personal "who" is that non-European traditions treat the Earth as living, not inert.

Option D — "Non-European societies have perceived the Earth as a non-living source of all resources" — removes that basis directly. If those very societies saw the Earth as non-living, there is nothing left to justify "who," and the pronoun becomes inappropriate. ✓

Why the others fail:

• A (western science finds Earth inanimate): The reviewer uses "who" precisely to challenge the western inert view, so more western evidence doesn't undo his stated reason.
• B (cause-effect between human activity and climate change): Has no bearing on whether Gaia is a "who."
• C (the book has a different title): Irrelevant to the pronoun choice.

Answer: D

This is an EXCEPT/inference question: three options follow from the review, one contradicts it. Test each against the text.

Option D — "academic discourses have always served the function of raising awareness about environmental preservation" — is actually contradicted. The passage says the colonial invaders' backers across "economics, politics, anthropology, philosophy, literature, technology, physics, chemistry, biology have dominated global intellectual discourse," drowning out the alternative, preservation-minded viewpoints. So intellectual discourse has historically served colonial and exploitative ends — not "always" raised environmental awareness. D is the exception.

The other three are inferable:

• A — Ghosh roots the climate crisis in 15th-century colonialism, so the two histories are intertwined.
• B — the dominant view of nature as a "resource" was installed by colonialism and "continues to the present day."
• C — Ghosh draws on non-European sources and the Pachamama framing, so policy makers can learn from them.

Answer: D

A "primary purpose" question asks what job an example does in the argument — so read what Ghosh uses the Banda episode to show, not just what happened in it.

The passage presents the Banda-islands story (the 1621 Dutch massacre, the genocide, forcing nutmeg into plantation mode) as the opening example of the two threads Ghosh traces worldwide: that colonialists "decimated not only indigenous populations but also indigenous understanding of the relationship between humans and Earth," and that they treated the Earth itself as a "resource" to exploit — a mindset that "continues to the present day."

So the episode models the colonial way of seeing nature that drives climate change. Option D captures both halves — the mindset and its link to climate change.

Why the others fail:

• A (role of plantation cultivation in climate change): Too narrow — plantation mode is one detail, not the purpose.
• B (first instance of climate-change processes): Ghosh dates the crisis to 15th-century colonialism broadly; Banda (1621) isn't singled out as the first instance, and the purpose is to show a mindset, not fix an origin date.
• C (systemic violence as the cornerstone of colonialism): Captures only the human-violence half and drops the Earth-as-resource dimension that ties it to climate change.

Answer: D

This is a para-summary: state the paragraph's main point and its scope in one line, then keep the option that captures both halves.

Main point. Society's pressure to be perfect is "hardly a new phenomenon" but it has changed shape. In the 1950s perfectionism meant conforming — "the perfectionist was under pressure to look like everyone else, only more so." Today's perfectionists, by contrast, "feel an obligation to stand out through their idiosyncratic style and wit" to survive in the attention economy.

Why B is right. It captures both halves at once: the pressure is long-standing, and it has evolved from conformism to non-conformism.

Why the others fail.

• A is static — "reflected in the media; people adhere to these ideals" — and misses the whole point that the ideal has shifted over time.
• C says the idea is "in a state of flux and hard to define," but the paragraph is perfectly clear about what changed; vagueness is not the point.
• D reduces everything to attention-seeking "to any lengths" — an overstatement that drops the conformity-to-non-conformity arc.

Answer: B

This is a para-jumble: find the sentence that can open (it introduces the topic and refers back to nothing), then follow the thread of connectors and back-references link by link.

Opener — 2. Sentence 2 introduces the printing press and paints the "before" picture: in scribal culture learning "primarily involved listening, so memorization was paramount." Nothing needs to come before it.

2 → 4. Sentence 4 says the printing press "shifted the learning process, as listening and memorisation gradually gave way to reading." The phrase listening and memorisation points straight back to the scribal culture just described in 2, and 4 states the shift itself.

4 → 3. Sentence 3 opens with "The transformation of learners from listeners to readers" — that listeners to readers is exactly the shift 4 named, and 3 adds that universal literacy only took root in the industrial era.

3 → 1. Sentence 1 begins "Centuries later…," carrying us to the present: learning is still reading-based despite film, radio and TV. A clean closer.

💡 Teacher tip: a sentence that starts with a time-jump like "Centuries later" almost always closes a jumble — it can only make sense after the earlier stages are laid out.

Answer: 2431

This is an odd-one-out: four sentences form one argument about a hiring shift; one sits just outside that thread. Find what unites the four.

The four that belong together trace the move from hard skills to soft skills in hiring:

• 1 opens the shift: though hard skills have traditionally ruled, some companies are moving away from hiring on technical ability alone.
• 3 shows the new demand: job descriptions now ask candidates to show soft skills such as leadership or teamwork.
• 4 adds the qualifier: this doesn't mean practical know-how is gone — some jobs still need highly specific expertise.
• 5 gives the cause: the move toward soft skills "is a natural response to three years of the pandemic," says a recruiter.

Together 1 → 3 → 4 → 5 make one clean argument: the balance is tilting toward soft skills, with a caveat and a reason.

Sentence 2 — companies "ditching the idea of looking for the singularly perfect candidate altogether" — introduces a different idea: abandoning the "one perfect candidate" ideal. That is a separate hiring theme, not part of the hard-to-soft-skills thread, so it is the odd one out.

Answer: 2

This is a detail question — go straight to where the passage names the main difficulty, which is Lovejoy's diagnosis.

Lovejoy's problem is "the lack of any 'single real entity, or type of entity' that the concept 'romanticism' designates," summed up in his line that "'romantic' has come to mean so many things that, by itself, it means nothing." In plain terms, the concept has no clear boundaries — option B, lack of clear conceptual contours of the domain.

Why the others fail:

• A (elusive, suggestive nature of romantic aesthetics): The passage calls this "another challenge" (the romantics wrote in fragments and aphorisms), not the main difficulty.
• C (controversial, scandalous history): "Scandal" is Lovejoy's metaphor for the definitional mess — there's no literal scandalous history here.
• D (absence of written accounts): Too strong — the romantics did write (fragments, aphorisms, poems); they just left no systematic theory.

Answer: B

This question asks for the romantics' own view of aesthetics — find their "most characteristic commitment" and read it plainly.

The passage states: "The most characteristic romantic commitment is to the idea that the character of art and beauty and of our engagement with them should shape all aspects of human life. Being fundamental to human existence, beauty and art should be a central ingredient not only in a philosophical or artistic life, but also in the lives of ordinary men and women."

So for the romantics, aesthetics runs through all of life — the philosophical and the everyday alike. That is option D.

Why the others fail — each states the opposite of the passage:

• A (confined to a separate domain): The romantics "rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain."
• B (only for philosophers and artists): They wanted it in the lives of "ordinary men and women" too.
• C (irrelevant to existence): They called beauty and art "fundamental to human existence."

Answer: D

This is a NOT-supported question: three options will match the passage and one will clash with it. Test each against the text.

Option B claims recent studies "seek to refute the differences between national romanticisms." The passage says the reverse: recent studies, "instead of overlooking the undeniable differences between the variety of romanticisms of different nations that Lovejoy had stressed," try to characterise romanticism "in terms of 'particular philosophical questions and concerns'." They acknowledge the differences — they don't refute or deny them. So B is not supported.

The other three are supported:

• A — characterising romantic aesthetics is "neither impossible nor undesirable" (stated directly).
• C — the romantics' views survive "in fragments, aphorisms and poems."
• D — "many of the romantics rejected the identification of aesthetics with a circumscribed domain."

Answer: B

This is a reason question: the passage gives the motive directly, so read the very sentence that lists "a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place."

The passage says recent studies "attempt to characterize romanticism, not in terms of a single definition, a specific time, or a specific place, but in terms of 'particular philosophical questions and concerns'." In other words, they drop the definition-time-place approach in order to focus on the fundamental concerns of the romantics — option C.

Why the others fail:

• A (variety makes general analysis impossible): Wrong — the studies do attempt a general characterisation; they just don't do it through a single definition.
• B (highlight the paradox of romantic aesthetics): Not the stated reason for avoiding a single definition.
• D (discredit Lovejoy's scepticism): They respond to Lovejoy, but their reason for dropping single-definition thinking is to focus on philosophical concerns, not to discredit him.

Answer: C

This is an EXCEPT question with a twist: find the one trait the passage does not attribute to both Pinker and the ancient Greek philosophers.

The passage links the two closely. Socrates "anticipated many of Pinker's points":

• "the virtue of knowing what you do not know" → awareness of gaps in one's knowledge (option A),
• "examining all premises in arguments" → awareness of underlying assumptions (option A again),
• "not simply trusting speakers' authority or charisma" → reaching independent conclusions regardless of who speaks (option D).

And on ethics: "rationality 'is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one'" — a point "subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle" (option B).

Option C — "the primacy of conscious sequential reasoning as the basis for seminal human achievements" — is what the passage actively argues against. Kekulé's benzene, Mozart's symphonies, even Socrates' dream-born insights show that great achievements are not products of step-by-step conscious reasoning. So neither party treats such reasoning as the basis of seminal achievement, and C is the EXCEPT.

Answer: C

This question asks why the author endorses logical reasoning — so find the sentence where the author praises its practical worth, not a side remark.

The endorsement is concrete: "Skill in this domain maps directly onto the navigation of many real-world problems, and Pinker shows how greater mastery of the tools of rationality can improve decision-making in medical, legal, financial and many other contexts in which we must act on uncertain and shifting information."

That is option C — logical reasoning equips people to tackle challenging practical problems.

Why the others fail:

• A (moral compass for ethical dilemmas): The author's actual complaint is that the moral dimension is under-explored — so this can't be the endorsed reason.
• B (focuses attention on real issues like development): This misreads the media aside (Pinker wants less coverage of rare scares); it's a side point, not why the author values reasoning.
• D (gain expertise in statistics): The book builds statistical literacy, but the endorsement is about real-world decisions, not becoming a specialist.

Answer: C

An "example" question asks what point the example illustrates — so read the sentence that introduces Kekulé and Mozart, not your own outside knowledge of them.

They arrive as evidence for this claim: "many of the deepest insights in the history of science, math, music and art strike their originators in moments of epiphany," and "much extraordinary human achievement is not a product of conscious, sequential reasoning."

Kekulé stands for science, Mozart for art — together they show that great innovations across different fields can spring from flashes of intuition rather than logical thinking. That is option A.

Why the others fail:

• B (Pinker "belied" by European achievements): The examples aren't framed as European, and "belied" overstates the author's measured tone.
• C (not just arts but science too benefit from flashes): This captures only the science-versus-arts split and misses the real thrust — challenging logical reasoning as the driver of great achievement.
• D ("unlike the sciences"): Wrong — the passage puts science (Kekulé) squarely among the intuition-driven examples, not opposite them.

Answer: A

A "why does the author refer to X" question is about the author's purpose. Locate where the Greek philosophers appear and what work they do there.

They appear in the critical part of the review, on the moral dimension Pinker leaves thin. The passage notes Pinker concedes that rationality "is not just a cognitive virtue but a moral one," yet "this profoundly important point, one subtly explored by ancient Greek philosophers like Plato and Aristotle, doesn't really get developed... a shame, since possessing the right sort of moral character is arguably a precondition for using rationality in beneficial ways."

So the Greek philosophers are invoked to expose a gap in Pinker's treatment of ethics in rational behaviour — option C.

Why the others fail:

• A (dreams/visions influenced inventions): That's a detail about Socrates specifically, not the purpose of citing the Greek philosophers as a group.
• B (similarities with Pinker): Only the Socrates line shows similarity; the weightier use here is the moral-dimension gap, which B ignores.
• D (influence on Pinker's arguments): The passage never claims Pinker was influenced by them.

Answer: C

A para-jumble: pin down the opener (it needs no earlier sentence), then chain the rest using the demonstratives and pronouns that tie each sentence to the one before it.

Opener — 3. Sentence 3 states the problem: e-waste holds valuable metals, ceramics and plastics that could be salvaged, "although currently not enough of it is" recycled. This is the general situation everything else responds to — and it supplies the "this problem" that sentence 1 refers to.

3 → 1. Sentence 1: Veena Sahajwalla "believes there is a new way of solving this problem." This problem = the under-recycling of e-waste in 3.

1 → 4. Sentence 4: "She plans to build microfactories…" The pronoun She is Sahajwalla, and this is her concrete plan.

4 → 2. Sentence 2: "Her vision is for automated drones and robots… smelt them… extract the metals one by one." This elaborates exactly what the microfactory does, so it follows 4.

💡 Teacher tip: a phrase like "this problem" cannot appear until the problem has already been stated — so the sentence that names the problem must come first.

Answer: 3142

This is a sentence-insertion question: find the blank where the inserted line completes one idea and hands off cleanly to the next. The strongest clue is a contrast word in the sentence that follows the correct blank.

The sentence to place: "For theoretical purposes, arguments may be considered as freestanding entities, abstracted from their contexts of use in actual human activities."

This line describes the abstract, theoretical view of arguments. Look for the moment the paragraph turns from that abstract view to the real-world one.

That turn is signalled by "But": "But depending on one's explanatory goals, there is also much to be gained from considering arguments as they in fact occur in human communicative practices." For that contrast to work — abstracted-from-context versus as-they-occur-in-practice — our inserted sentence must sit immediately before the "But."

1. Blank (1) opens the paragraph, before arguments have even been defined — too early to sum up a "theoretical view."
2. Blank (2) falls between the two definitions of an argument; dropping the "freestanding entities" summary here interrupts that pairing.
3. Blank (3) is the fit: the definitions and the support-relation sentence all describe the abstract view, our sentence packages that view as "freestanding, abstracted from context," and the very next "But..." pivots to the practical view. Clean hand-off.
4. Blank (4) comes after the contrast has already been made, so it's too late.

Answer: Blank 3

This is a sentence-insertion question: the inserted line must drop into the one blank where it both fits what comes before and sets up what comes after. Watch for a pointer phrase in the following sentence.

The sentence to place: "Beyond undermining the monopoly of the State on the use of force, armed conflict also creates an environment that can enable organized crime to prosper."

Notice it names an environment in which crime can flourish. Now look for a following sentence that points back to such an environment.

1. Blank (1) is the very start — but the paragraph's first sentence already introduces the arms–crime–conflict linkage. Placing our sentence here makes two openers say almost the same thing, and "Beyond undermining..." would start with no idea to build "beyond."
2. Blank (2) would place "Beyond undermining the monopoly of the State..." right after the line about "eroding governance" — that just repeats the same idea back to back.
3. Blank (3) is the fit. It comes after the point that criminal revenue funds non-State armed groups, and just before: "In this context, when hostilities cease... the widespread availability of surplus arms... can contribute to a situation of 'criminalized peace'." Our inserted sentence supplies exactly the context — an environment where organized crime prospers — that "In this context" then refers to. The link is tight.
4. Blank (4) is the closing slot, too late to establish the environment that the earlier "In this context" needs.

💡 Teacher tip: A phrase like "In this context" is a magnet — the sentence just before it must be that context. Insert the line that creates the situation the pointer points to.

Answer: Blank 3