CAT VERBAL ABILITY | CAT PARAJUMBLE QUESTIONS

1. CAT Parajumbles: Good Writing

A. Good writers use more verbs.

B. However, it is hard to write without verbs.

C. The reason is that if unnecessary words are reduced, the verb-percentage goes up
as a mathematical necessity.

D. So “use verbs” is not really good advice; writers have to use verbs, and trying to
add extra ones would not turn out well.

1. ABCD
2. ACBD
3. ABDC
4.

Choice B
ACBD

5.
2. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: The French Revolution

A. The French Revolution created a vision for a new moral universe: that sovereignty
resides in nations; that a constitution and the rule of law govern politics; that people
are equal and njoy inalienable rights; and that church and state should be separate.

B. The French Revolution invented modern revolution —the idea that humans can
transform the world according to a plan—and so has a central place in the study of the
social sciences.

C. It ushered in modernity by destroying the foundations of the “Old Regime”—

absolutist politics, legal inequality, a “feudal” economy (characterized by guilds,
manorialism, and even serfdom), and an alliance of church and state.

D. That vision is enshrined in the Declaration of the Rights of Man and Citizen of
1789, whose proclamation of “natural, imprescriptible, and inalienable” rights served
as the model for the 1948 United Nations Universal Declaration of Human Rights.

1. ADBC
2. BADC
3. ACBD
4. BCAD

Choice D
BCAD

3. CAT Parajumbles: The south pole telescope

 A. During the 24-hour darkness of the austral autumn and winter, the South Pole
Telescope operates nonstop under impeccable conditions for astronomy.

B. The atmosphere is thin (the pole is more than 9,300 feet above sea level, 9,000 of
which are ice), stable (due to the absence of the heating and cooling effects of a rising
and setting Sun) and the pole has some of the calmest winds on Earth, blowing almost
always from the same direction.

C. “The South Pole has the harshest environment on Earth, but also the most benign,”
says William Holzapfel, a University of California at Berkeley astrophysicist, the on-
site lead researcher at the South Pole Telescope.

D. From an astronomer’s perspective, not until the Sun goes down and stays down—
March through September— does the South Pole get “benign.”

1. ABCD
2. CDBA
3. CDAB
4. ACBD

Choice C
CDAB

4. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Perpetuating Strandards - Integers

A. As "operating systems", Latin and French outlived the strategic pre-eminence of

Rome and France.

B. Nor will Chinese, Russian, or Indian culture soon shoulder aside the American
version-high or low- whose draw is embodied by Harvard and Hollywood.

C. Once a standard exists, it tends to perpetuate itself-just like the dollar, for all its ups
and downs will not soon yield to the Euro or the Renminbi.

D. By such measures, no other rival, not even China, comes close to America,
whatever the country's many familiar failings and riches of the rising rest.

1. ACBD
2. BADC
3. CBAD
4. CABD

Choice C
CBAD

5. CAT Parajumbles: Plant Evolution

 A. The oldest fossil grasses are just 70 million years old, although grass may have
evolved a bit earlier than that.

B. There have been land plants for 465 million years, yet there were no flowers for
over two-thirds of that time.

C. The equally-familiar grasses appeared even more recently.

D. Flowering plants only appeared in the middle of the dinosaur era.

1. DCBA
2. BCAD
3. CADB
4. BDCA

Correct AnswerChoice D
BDCA

Explanation

6. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Identity Politics

A. Nevertheless, the focus of otherwise very different movements - from cultural

feminism to environmentalism to radical jihadism - is fundamentally the same: moral
regulation.

B. Identity politics constantly demands the creation of new identities and lifestyle
groups, often hostile to one another.

C. The main beneficiary of this shift from explicit political clashes to new forms of
culture war has been identity politics.

D. Many of the political battles of the past two decades have actually been battles
over cultural values, be it marriage, family, sexuality, abortion, immigration,
multiculturalism, Islam or the EU.

1. BACD
2. DACB
3. DCBA
4. BADC

Choice D
BADC

7. CAT Parajumbles: Indian Village Culture and Polity

A. Patrilineal ownership of lands and the culture of dowry attached to it have turned
daughters into bad debts.
 B. The control of such castes on local politics aggravates masculine hubris.

C. The bigotry of our village culture and polity is intrinsically linked to a control of
land and agriculture.

D. Land makes certain castes ‘kingly’ in rural communities.

1. DBCA
2. DABC
3. CDBA
4. ADBC

Choice C

CDBA

8. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: The Cold War

A. The Cold War was underpinned by an understanding which allowed the US to

maintain hegemony over the capitalist world and which gave the Soviet Union a
regional sphere of influence in Eastern Europe.

B. The bloody upheavals and wars occurred not in Europe, America or Russia, but in
Asia, Africa and the Middle East, and were either directly or indirectly a response to
the experience of Western colonialism.

C. Despite the aggressive rhetoric of this era, the Cold War was a period of relative
peace between hostile geopolitical blocs.

D. In retrospect, what was remarkable about the Cold War was the ability of most of
the major players to manage their conflict.

1. ADCB
2. DBCA
3. CBDA
4. BADC

Choice D

2. CAT Parajumbles: The Mandate of Heaven

A. The Mandate of Heaven indicated divine approval of a king’s right to rule.

B. In other words, the Mandate of Heaven gave divine ruling authority to kings that
lived a moral life, administered justice, and protected the welfare of his people.
 C. Whereas Medieval Europeans legitimized their ruling authority by the divine right
of kings, Confucian societies used a similar concept called the Mandate of Heaven.

D. However, it differed from the divine right of kings in that Heaven’s endorsement
depends upon the virtuous conduct of the ruler.

1. ABCD
2. ABDC
3. CDAB
4. CADB

Choice D
CADB

3. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: General Yi

A. General Yi knew that the Ming dynasty was more powerful than Mongols were
and judged that if he attacked, the Ming would likely invade Korea.

B. Upon his arrival in Kaesŏng, General Yi toppled the government through a military
coup and in 1392 CE, he placed himself on the throne —ushering in the Chosŏn
Kingdom.

C. Due to his prominence in 1388 CE, the anti-Ming (pro-Mongol) faction sent
General Yi to expel a contingent of Ming troops stationed on the northern part of the
Korean Peninsula.

D. Seeing the campaign as a potential disaster, General Yi turned his troops south
towards the Koryŏ capital, Kaesŏng.

1. ACDB
2. CADB
3. ADCB
4. CBDA

Choice B
CADB

4. CAT Parajumbles: Gender Equality

Elite American colleges are now widely suspected of admitting male applicants with
lower grades, to even up the numbers.

B. At least in the rich world, that wasteful truth has been triumphantly overcome.

C. Stendhal once wrote that all geniuses who were born women were lost to the public
good.
 D. Yet, despite this monumental advance, much ability, both male and female, is
wasted because of tenacious stereotypes.

1. ABDC
2. ADCB
3. CBAD
4. CDBA

Choice C
CBAD

5. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Hate Speech

A. Hate speech is characterized by a deliberate targeting of communities rather than

beliefs.

B. What the management must seek to do is to not let political discussions and
debates to descend into vituperative attacks and hate speech.

C. But such an association will be spurious, as questioning orthodoxy and

conservatism is not tantamount to hate speech.

D. The student body's activism has been criticized by detractors and it has been
sought to be associated with hate speech.

1. BACD
2. ACDB
3. DBCA
4. DCAB

Choice D
DCAB

6. CAT Parajumbles: The British Empire

A. The main driving force of the British Empire’s global expansion was the pursuit of
commercial interests.

B. That entailed helping the weaker side in order to promote a regional balance of
power and preventing the rise of a regional power, or at least reducing its impact on
British security and interests.

C. Creating a balance of power and fostering regional stability could help to realize
commercial goals; hence these became the core of the British Empire’s strategy.

D. Britain put these practices to use in its continental policy for hundreds of years.

1. ADBC
2. CBDA
3. ACBD
 4. CABD

Choice C
ACBD

7. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Flight Safety

A. The crash in the Alps has launched a search for a solution to the problem of
accessing the cockpit from outside if the plane has been commandeered from within.

B. Flight safety has so far focused on threats from the passenger side, and the 9/11
terror episode led to fortification of the cockpit.

C. But if they are in a position to act, pilots can override this mechanism.

D. In exceptional circumstances, such as an emergency affecting the pilot and the

cockpit area, the crew can use a code that opens the cockpit door briefly, or it even
opens automatically if the pilots are immobilized due to depressurization.

1. ABCD
2. ADCB
3. BADC
4. BDCA

Choice D
BDCA

8. CAT Parajumbles: Accelerating The Economy

A. Indeed, Indian policy-planners find themselves in a predicament thanks to the

continued monetary easing by some nations and the shrinkage in world trade.

B. In this context, a fund-starved country like India will do well to focus on foreign
direct investment rather than get unduly worried about foreign institutional
investment, which will have its ebb and flow depending on the environment outside..

C. With everyone waiting for the other to act first, the onus is definitely on the
political bosses to devise quick solutions to accelerate the economy.

D. Given this ‘new normal’ kind of an environment, they will have to look at ways to
protect the Indian economy from external vicissitudes.

1. ADBC
2. CDBA
3. BDCA
4. CABD
 Choice A
ADBC

9. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Comments Section in A News Website

A. Comments have the potential to turn a news website into a democratic polyphony.

B. But, there is also a danger of it descending to cacophony if readers do not express

opinions in a language that behooves the requirements of a matured public sphere.

C. It can become a site for multiple concurrent debates, for registering dissent, for
pursuing an idea and finally for building a polity of informed choices.

D. The role of the moderators is to retain the space for polyphony and reject voices
that breed cacophony.

1. ABCD
2. ABDC
3. DBAC
4. ACBD

Choice D
ACBD

10. CAT Parajumbles: The Right to be Forgotten

A. Delisting the content under the parameters of "the right to be forgotten" does not
mean the information is taken down from the Internet, but that it's no longer readily
available to the public through a simple search on an intermediary such as Google.

B. However, those who support this controversial legislation say people shouldn’t be
unfairly dogged by inaccurate, irrelevant, or outdated information that turns up when
their name is put into a search engine.

C. The Court of Justice of the European Union established a "right to be forgotten" in

a landmark decision in May 2014, allowing Europeans to ask search engines to delist
certain links from results they show based on searches for that person’s name.

D. A number of other countries, including Russia, have proposed their own versions
of the right to be forgotten, which has led campaigners for freedom of expression to
warn that such decisions could limit what content is readily available online in these
countries.

1. CADB
2. CDAB
3. DCAB
4. CBDA

Choice A
CADB
11. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Solving Economic Problems

A. But that would require a tough look at the economy, at the dearth of productivity,
and at how it might be possible to restore conditions of growth. It would require
serious investment, risk-taking, and nerve.

B. If those currently carping about the tax affairs of the rich really did care about
raising tax revenues, they would concentrate on raising the volume of wealth that can
be taxed.

C. The problem with the eagerness to recast economic problems, from a failure to cut
the deficit to the continued inability to restore conditions of growth, as a moral issue
and an erring on the part of selfish individuals who just aren’t giving enough back,
leaves the real problems untouched.

D. These are not qualities today’s political class have in abundance. So, instead, they
continue to project blame, singling out individuals for moral censure in the hope that
they will increase their payments to the state.

1. BCAD
2. CBAD
3. BACD
4. CABD

Choice D
CABD

12. CAT Parajumbles: Sortition

A. A more vital, dynamic and inclusive form of democracy is generated as the risk of
corruption reduces, election fever abates and attention to the common good increases.

B. As those who have been drafted are exposed to expert opinion, objective
information and public debate, voting is not simply based on gut feel, but careful
deliberation.

C. Renaissance states such as Venice and Florence experienced centuries of political

stability by practicing democracy on the basis of sortition, or drafting by lot.

D. With sortition, everyone does not vote on an issue few understand, but a random
sample of the population is drafted to come to grips with the problem, in order to take
a sensible decision.

1. CDAB
2. DBAC
3. CDBA
4. DCBA

Choice C
CDBA
13. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Urbanization and Infectious Disease

A. With vaccination, arguably our strongest and most cost-effective defense against
infectious disease, urbanization is already presenting challenges.

B. It used to be the case that the one-in-five children missing out on a full course of
even the most basic vaccines lived in remote rural communities.

C. Without strong health systems in place, the higher the population density the more
difficult it becomes to prevent and control outbreaks, and not just because of the
increased risk of contagion.

D. Today, we’re increasingly discovering that many of these hardest-to-reach children

are in marginalized urban communities – right in the heart of cities, often hiding in
plain sight.

1. ABDC
2. BDCA
3. CABD
4. ACBD

Choice C
CABD

14. CAT Parajumbles: Jellyfish and Climate Change

A. Not only can jellyfish withstand the impact of climate change, they also have the
capacity to accelerate it.

B. At the same time, jellyfish also consume vast amounts of plankton, which are a
major means of taking carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere and oceans. Their loss
can hasten climate change.

C. Jellyfish are better prepared than other marine life for the changing ocean
environment, such as warmer temperatures, salinity changes, ocean acidification and
pollution.

D. They release carbon-rich feces and mucus that bacteria prefer to use for
respiration, turning these bacteria into carbon dioxide factories.

1. ABDC
2. CADB
3. ACDB
4. CDBA

Choice B
CADB
15. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Athletes and the Media

A. Athletes may not be role models, but they’re certainly digital lightning rods.

B. Nearly twenty years ago athletes did as they pleased, only entering the public news
scope if an off-the-court/field dustup was so monumental that the nightly news
couldn’t afford not to cover it.

C. Athletes might want the ability to make millions while still being able to crack off-
kilter and slightly offensive jokes without seeing the number of zeroes in their
paycheck affected, but that’s not how it works.

D. Today, thanks to the advancement in social media with tools like Facebook and
Twitter, athletes have signed up for a 24 hour a day news conference.

1. BDCA
2. ABDC
3. DABC
4. CDBA

Choice A
BDCA

16. CAT Parajumbles: The Earth's Orbital Tilt

A. According to scientists from NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the current

melting of ice in Greenland is already causing the tilt to change at a rate of
approximately 2.6 cm each year.

B. While a natural event such as this could bring about major changes to the climate,
some scientists are warning that there is a possibility for reverse feedback.

C. The Earth's orbital tilt is said to vary between 22 and 25 degrees roughly every
41,000 years.

D. In other words, instead of an orbital tilt causing climate change, current changes in
climate could end up causing changes in the Earth's axial tilt.

1. ABCD
2. CDBA
3. CBDA
4. ABDC

Choice C
CBDA
17. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: War and Peace

A. One of the beauties of Leo Tolstoy’s novel 'War and Peace' is that it does not end
when the war ends.

B. It ends instead when the hero gets married, and settles down to a life of routine,
even boredom.

C. In conveying this ceaseless ebb and flow of life, Tolstoy captures its very essence.

D. Concluding it at the moment of heroic drama would have destroyed the integrity of
the novel.

1. ABDC
2. CABD
3. ADBC
4. ABCD

Choice C
ABCD

18. CAT Parajumbles: Darwin and the Galapagos Islands

A. What Darwin discovered on the Galapagos Isles was not the idea that species
evolved, or even a possible model for how that evolution might have taken place.

B. His ability to see this fact, and exploit it so brilliantly, is why we remember
Charles Darwin today.

C. Darwin ultimately owes the near-instant success of his theory to the fact that the
islands of the Galapagos made such perfect petri dishes for generating that evidence.

D. Rather, what he found was a naturally occurring laboratory, one exquisitely shaped
to allow the study of speciation and to make his model the first supported by real
evidence.

1. ADCB
2. CADB
3. CBAD
4. ACDB

Choice A
ADCB

19. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: The Oxygen Catastrophe

A. This burnt off many living forms and it took a long time before oxygen- using life
forms started flourishing about 500 million years later.
 B. Some of this was ‘fixed’ by iron and organic matter of earth, but the rest soon led
the ‘poisonous’ gas, oxygen, attain levels of about 20 per cent in the air.

C. Those days, the earth was rich in a set of microbes called cyanobacteria, which
started the early events of photosynthesis, wherein the microbe used CO2 for energy
production and emitted oxygen gas as the waste material.

D. One such massive upheaval of the earth’s atmosphere occurred about 2.4 billion
years ago, during what is called the “Oxygen Catastrophe”.

E. Cyanobacteria reproduced very fast (doubling every 30 minutes), leading to vast

amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere.

1. DABCE
2. CEBAD
3. CBDEA
4. DCEBA

Correct AnswerChoice D
DCEBA

Explanation

20. CAT Parajumbles: Farming and Fixed Settlements

A. As people turned to farming, they began to live in fixed settlements, which became
small towns.

B. Their labors bore fruit; surplus food freed some of the population from farming.

C. In about 5000 BC, farmers moved down into the fertile river valleys of
Mesopotamia, and built dykes and ditches to irrigate the arid land.

D. The cultivation of plants, such as wheat and barley, and the domestication of
animals, such as sheep, goats and cattle, began in the Near East in about 8500 BC.

1. DACB
2. CDAB
3. ACBD
4. CBAD

Correct AnswerChoice A
DACB

Explanation
21. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: INSAT-3DR Launch

The Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) crossed an important milestone with
the successful launch of weather satellite INSAT-3DR using a Geosynchronous
Satellite Launch Vehicle (GSLV) equipped with the indigenous cryogenic upper
stage.

A. The September 8 GSLV launch marks the third consecutive success; the fact that it
is the first operational flight by the GSLV carrying the indigenous cryogenic upper
stage is confirmation that India now belongs to the elite club of countries that have
mastered the cryogenic technology.

B. Likewise, igniting a cryogenic fuel and sustaining the combustion for a prolonged
period is a daunting task.

C. Maintaining structural and thermal integrity of the engine at very high

temperatures during combustion just a few centimeters away from – 250° C, a
temperature at which materials behave very differently, is a huge challenge.

D. This marks a departure from the long history of failures with the GSLV; except for
the first, every launch of the Polar Satellite Launch Vehicle (PSLV), the workhorse of
ISRO, has been a success.

The Thursday launch had fully utilized the maximum payload carrying capacity of the
GSLV-Mk II by carrying the heaviest satellite (2,211 kg) ever from Indian soil.

1. ABCD
2. DACB
3. CBAD
4. ADCB

Correct AnswerChoice B
DACB

Explanation

22. CAT Parajumbles: Past Glory

A. Not long after their victory, the Greeks began to think that they would never stack
up to the glories of the past.

B. Throughout antiquity, those warriors, especially the Marathonomachai, who fought

and defeated the Persian troops in the 490 BCE Battle of Marathon, would be revered
as Athens’ Greatest Generation.

C. Even in the mid-fifth century BCE, Athenians were already looking back with
longing.
 D. A few decades earlier, Athenian citizen-soldiers had helped to rout the Persian
invaders of Greece.

1. ACDB
2. DBCA
3. BDAC
4. CDBA

Correct AnswerChoice D
CDBA

Explanation

23. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Parasaurolophus

A. Interestingly, most creatures, including humans, vocalise using softer organs and
membranes that tend to decompose instead of entering into the fossil record.

B. The family of duck-billed dinosaurs known as Parasaurolophus had been at the

centre of the paleo-acoustic conversation.

C. They are herbivorous creatures named for the shape of their mouths, but better
known for the large, bony crests arching over the back of their heads like a single
blunted horn.

D. Parasaurolophus is a rarity in this regard, as no other animal has been known to

dedicate so much hard, fossil-friendly tissue to making noise.

1. ABCD
2. ADBC
3. BCAD
4. BCDA

Correct AnswerChoice C
BCAD

Explanation

24. CAT Parajumbles: The International Criminal Court

A. Even if the Court is not motivated by an anti-African agenda, it is no less

concerning that it acts, without fail, in concert with its North Atlantic backers.

B. It simply reproduces a Western narrative of Russian aggression that justifies

NATO’s largest build-up of military forces in eastern Europe since the Cold War.
 C. That military intervention in Africa by former colonial powers has been followed,
almost without exception, by the International Criminal Court’s juridical intervention,
leaves Africans understandably suspicious.

D. And the Court’s recent decision to launch an investigation into South Ossetia—its
first extra-African investigation—is but of a piece with its earlier interventions, doing
little to assuage that concern.

1. CADB
2. BCDA
3. ADBC
4. CDBA

Correct AnswerChoice A
CADB

Explanation

25. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: The Perseid Meteor Shower

A. Despite the comet taking 133 years to pass by the Earth, the meteor shower
happens every year as a result of the earth moving through the trail of the comet's
orbit.

B. Like any other comet, Swift-Tuttle follows a steep incline when compared to
planets in the solar system, gathering a lot of speed as it dives down into the solar
system to get close to the sun and out again.

C. This link between the comet and the meteor shower was discovered within three
years of the comet's discovery-- by Giovanni Schiaparelli in 1865.

D. The spectacular Perseid meteor shower that is witnessed every August, peaking in
mid-August, is, in fact, created by the dust and debris left by the Swift Tuttle.

1. BDCA
2. BDAC
3. DBAC
4. DBCA

Correct AnswerChoice B
BDAC

Explanation

26. CAT Parajumbles: Government Intervention In Markets

 A. Every time financial speculation creates a crisis, governments are expected to tax
their citizens and use that money to save banks and financial institutions.

B. Liberalism insisted on the separation of the state and the market, and decried
government interference in markets.

C. Even if one argues, as some do, that liberal capitalism was always to some extent
state capitalism, this signifies a major shift.

D. Neo-liberalism believes that governments should intervene in markets — but only

on the side of banks, finance capitalists and lending agencies.

1. ADBC
2. BADC
3. DABC
4. BDAC

Correct AnswerChoice D
BDAC

Explanation

27. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: The Lehman Crisis

A. Had the world’s leading central banks not provided emergency liquidity back in
2008, the global economy would have faced meltdown.

B. But what started as a short-term emergency painkiller then morphed into a

prolonged monetary coma.

C. After the Lehman crisis, low rates and quantitative easing were needed.

D. Payment systems would have failed, sparking panic, economic torpor and civil
unrest.

1. ABDC
2. CADB
3. ACBD
4. CBAD

Correct AnswerChoice B
CADB

Explanation

28. CAT Parajumbles: Means and Ends

 A. If you’ve reached the point where you’re ready to hand censorship tools to an
authoritarian regime in the name of making the world more open and connected, it’s
time to ask what mission you’re really serving.

B. For example: Facebook in 2016 secretly built a censorship tool, presumably to

pave the way for future entry into China.

C. When your company’s ends are as grand as “bringing the world closer together” or
“accelerating the advent of sustainable transport,” it becomes pretty easy to justify
unsavory means.

D. According to reporting by the New York Times’ Mike Isaac, Zuckerberg

responded to employees’ concern by assuring them, “It’s better for Facebook to be a
part of enabling conversation, even if it’s not yet the full conversation.”

1. ACBD
2. CADB
3. ABDC
4. CBDA

Correct AnswerChoice D
CBDA

Explanation

29. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Ocean Currents

A. As that segment of ocean flow, known as the Gulf Stream, pushes north, it cools
and becomes denser and eventually sinks, forming the so-called deepwater that flows
back southward along the ocean floor toward Antarctica.

B. The warm, salty waters of the tropical Atlantic cruise northward along the eastern
coast of the United States before darting toward northwestern Europe.

C. It also determines several climatic features, such as the latitude at which a key
tropical rain belt is located, which impacts water supplies, precipitation for agriculture
and the health of tropical ecosystems.

D. This cycle, called the Atlantic Meridional Overturning Circulation, plays a key role
in moving heat around the planet as well as nutrients throughout the ocean.

1. ADBC
2. BCDA
3. ADBC
4. BADC

Correct AnswerChoice D
BADC
 Explanation

30. CAT Parajumbles: Antiseptics and Antibiotics

A. These chemicals break an essential part of a bacterial cell, but they usually break
the same part of human cells too.

B. This is the key to antibiotic function: exploiting the fact that bacteria are similar to
human cells without being identical.

C. This makes medical antiseptics terrible antibiotics, as their use in high

concentrations may cause tissue damage or slow wound healing.

D. Luckily, sometimes there are bacterial parts not found in humans, or if they are,
they are very different.

E. It’s relatively easy to find new antiseptics, which can kill microbes on the skin and
the surface of tissues.

1. EACDB
2. DBEAC
3. EBADC
4. EABCD

Correct AnswerChoice A
EACDB

Explanation

31. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Urbanization and Infectious Disease

A. But when it feels other ants walking on its back, the ant simply stays put.

B. When an ant on the march comes to a gap in its path, it slows down.

C. In this way, the ants build a bridge long enough to span whatever gap is in front of
them.

D. The process repeats as the next ant in line slows, gets trampled and freezes in
place.

E. The rest of the colony, still barreling along at 12 centimeters per second, comes
trampling over its back.

1. BDEAC
2. BEADC
 3. BEDCA
4. BADEC

Correct AnswerChoice B
BEADC

Explanation

32. CAT Parajumbles: The Treachery of Images

A. With his iconic painting, Margritte showed how art can change our view of this
world and give us a fresh opportunity to attempt to define the indefinable.

B. Magritte, who considered himself a thinker who communicated through paint,

wanted to prove that images could equal words in the expression of consciousness.

C. In painting this, Margritte was inspired by the definition of a poem by popular

literary figures André Breton and Paul Éluard, who declared that “Poetry is a pipe”.

D. One of René Magritte’s most famous paintings, “The Treachery of Images,”

features an image of a tobacco pipe with the words “This is not a pipe” underneath it.

1. BDCA
2. BADC
3. DBCA
4. DCBA

Correct AnswerChoice D
DCBA

Explanation

33. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Diminishing Political Authority

A. Hopelessness, exhaustion and dwindling control over national economic life are
the themes of politics all across the world.

B. As a result, states have been forced to shed social commitments in order to reinvent
themselves as custodians of the market.

C. This has drastically diminished national political authority in both real and
symbolic ways.

D. The destruction of state authority over capital has been the clear-cut objective of
 the financial revolution that defines our present era.

1. ADCB
2. ACDB
3. DBCA
4. DCBA

Correct AnswerChoice C
DBCA

Explanation

34. CAT Parajumbles: Communication in Elephants

A. As elephants trumpet, the high-frequency vibrations of their massive vocal chords

reach the ears of other elephants within a mile.

B. This is especially useful in the jungle, where dense vegetation rapidly degrades
auditory information, though not seismic cues.

C. A two-tiered communication model based on hearing and feeling provides an

effective way of sending messages to nearby herd members as well as more distant
rival herds.

D. Remarkably, the low frequencies travel through the ground to be picked up by the
extremely sensitive feet of elephants up to six miles away.

1. ADCB
2. ACDB
3. CDBA
4. CADB

Correct AnswerChoice A
ADCB

Explanation

35. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Tatar Settlement in Lithuania

A. Tatar was the common name for Turkic-speaking, semi-nomadic people living on
or around the immense steppes of the Eurasian continent.

B. Duke Vytautas welcomed them. In return, the Tatars provided their new country,
and later Poland, with military assistance against Tamerlane.
 C. After the dissolution of the Mongol empire, a group of Muslim Tatars, fleeing the
Turko-Mongol ruler Tamerlane, asked the Christian grand duke of Lithuania for
asylum.

D. John III Sobieski, the king of the Polish-Lithuanian Commonwealth, might not
have won the Battle of Vienna were it not for the help of his country’s Sunni Muslim
Tatars.

1. ACBD
2. ACDB
3. DACB
4. CBAD

Correct AnswerChoice C
DACB

Explanation

36. CAT Parajumbles: Sans Forgetica

A. The reader's mind naturally seeks to complete the shapes, and in doing so, it slows
down the reading process and improves memory.

B. Based on this idea, a new font, Sans Forgetica, has been created by psychology and
design researchers at RMIT University in Melbourne.

C. Sans Forgetica is sleek and back-slanted with intermittent gaps in each letter,
which serve as a simple puzzle for the reader.

D. People remember things better when their brains have to overcome minor obstacles
while processing information.

1. DABC
2. DBCA
3. CDBA
4. CDAB

Correct AnswerChoice B
DBCA

Explanation

37. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: The 2008 Financial Crisis

 A. A drop in household consumption due to the rise in private debt was a key driver
of the recession in the U.S.

B. Indeed, the lack of regulatory control over the growth in credit as well as the flow
of credit into real estate was the issue.

C. A crucial aspect of the 2008 financial crisis was the build-up of debt in households
and in non-financial firms.

D. This, however, is not to negate the view that regulatory failure was the principal
cause of the crisis.

1. ADCB
2. ACDB
3. CABD
4. CADB

Correct AnswerChoice D
CADB

Explanation

38. CAT Parajumbles: Monopsony

A. More recently, the concentration of a few dominant players in many industries,

along with the decline of labor unions, has raised the issue of monopsony once again.

B. Monopsony power was a key feature of the company towns that helped define the
Industrial Revolution, since everybody served one employer in most of these towns.

C. In the labor market context, this means that negotiating ability is tilted toward
corporations, making it difficult for workers to push for higher pay.

D. Monopsony is a situation wherein there are many providers of a product in the

market but only one dominant buyer, who holds all the cards and can drive prices
down.

1. BACD
2. BADC
3. DCBA
4. DBAC

Correct AnswerChoice C
DCBA

Explanation
39. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Martian Brines

A. Studies reveal that Martian brines today could hold higher concentrations of
oxygen than were present on Earth about 2.4 billion years ago, when the first
landmass emerged on Earth.

B. Although Mars is today a freeze-dried desert, it possesses abundant reserves of

subsurface water ice, as well as some amount of liquid water in the form of brines.

C. These pools of salty liquid can capture even meager amounts of oxygen from the
Mars’ atmosphere, creating a reservoir that microbes might metabolically utilize.

D. The brines’ high salt content lowers the temperature at which they freeze, allowing
them to remain liquid even on the Red Planet's frigid surface.

1. BDCA
2. ABDC
3. ADCB
4. BCAD

Correct AnswerChoice A
BDCA

Explanation

40. CAT Parajumbles: The Night Watch

A. In 17th-century Amsterdam, it was highly common for the guilds to commission

portraits of themselves wearing their uniforms and holding weapons.

B. It was Rembrandt’s riveting interplay of light, motion, texture and expression

transformed a commonplace commission into a masterwork.

C. Its status and critical acclaim, though, have little to do with its subject matter: a
civic-guard group tasked with keeping watch on the city walls.

D. The painting Militia Company of District II Under the Command of Captain Frans
Banninck Cocq, better-known as The Night Watch, is probably Rembrandt’s most
famous work.

1. ACDB
2. DBAC
3. ADCB
4. DCAB
 Correct AnswerChoice D
DCAB

Explanation

41. CAT Sentence Rearrangement: Political Competition

A. When the perceived cost of losing is sufficiently high, politicians may be tempted
to abandon forbearance and play constitutional hardball.

B. When parties view one another as mortal enemies, the stakes of political
competition heighten dramatically.

C. Such behavior, in turn, might further undermine mutual toleration, reinforcing the
false belief that political rivals pose a dangerous threat.

D. Losing ceases to be a routine and accepted part of the political process and instead
becomes a full-blown catastrophe.

1. BDAC
2. DABC
3. DACB
4. ADBC

Correct AnswerChoice A
BDAC

Explanation

42. CAT Parajumbles: The Metric System

A. The quest to define units of measurement using constants of nature goes back to
the creation of the metric system during the French Revolution.

B. It was a utopian project, with its creators imagining that a shared system of weights
and measures would unite the world, allowing for the free exchange of goods and
information.

C. The metric system was created with the intention of liberating the common man
and woman from the confusing and inconsistent weights and measures of the old
regime.

D. At this time, the ideology of liberty, equality, fraternity was embraced not just by
revolutionaries, but by scientists as well.
 1. ACDB
2. ADCB
3. ABDC
4. ADBC

Correct AnswerChoice B
ADCB

Explanation

The following questions are from IPMAT Rohtak and Indore sample papers. If you want to take
these questions as a mock please click below.

IPMAT Rohtak Sample Paper Mock

IPMAT Indore Sample Paper Mock

Please note that the explanation button will take you to the IPMAT solution page.

43. IPMAT 2020 Sample Paper - IPM Rohtak Verbal Ability

Each passage consist of six sentences. The first and sixth sentence are given in the
begining. The middle four sentences in each have been removed and jumbled up.
These are labelled as P, Q, R and S. Find out the proper order for the four sentences.

S1: The future beckons to us.

P: In fact we have hard work ahead.
Q : Where do we go and what shall be our endeavour?
R : We shall also have to fight and end poverty, ignorance and disease.
S : It will be to bring freedom and oppurtunity to the common man.
S6: There is no resting for any one of us till we redeem our pledge in full.

The Proper sequence should be:

1. PSRQ
2. QPSR
3. QSRP
4. SRPQ

Correct AnswerChoice C
QSRP

Explanation

44. IPMAT 2020 Sample Paper - IPM Rohtak Verbal Ability

 Each passage consist of six sentences. The first and sixth sentence are given in the
begining. The middle four sentences in each have been removed and jumbled up.
These are labelled as P, Q, R and S. Find out the proper order for the four sentences.

S1: I had halted on the road.

P: As soon as I saw the elephant I knew I should not shoot him.
Q : It is a serious matter to shoot a working elephant.
R : I knew that his 'must' was already passing off.
S : The elephant was standing 8 yards from the road.
S6: I decided to watch him for a while and then go home.

The Proper sequence should be:

1. SPQR
2. PQSR
3. RQPS
4. SRPQ

Correct AnswerChoice A
SPQR

Explanation

45. IPMAT 2020 Sample Paper - IPM Rohtak Verbal Ability

Each passage consist of six sentences. The first and sixth sentence are given in the
begining. The middle four sentences in each have been removed and jumbled up.
These are labelled as P, Q, R and S. Find out the proper order for the four sentences.

S1 : A noise started above their heads.

P: But people did not take it seriously.
Q : That was to show everyone that there was something wrong
R : It was a dangerous thing to do.
S : For, within minutes the shipbegan to sink.
S6: Nearly 200 lives were lost.

The Proper sequence should be:

1. QRPS
2. QPRS
3. RPQS
4. RQSP

Correct AnswerChoice B
QPRS

Explanation
46. IPMAT 2020 Question Paper - IPM Indore Verbal

The sentences given below, when properly sequenced, form a coherent paragraph.
Each sentence is labelled with a number. Decide on the most logical order and enter
the sequence of numbers in the space provided.

1)He just harvested the wild grains.

2)The hunter-gatherer went from place to place in search of food.

3)As the crops began to give better yields, this reduced his need to go in search of
animals and wild plants.

4)This was followed by an attempt to grow food by scattering the spare grains.

Correct Answer2413

Explanation

47. IPMAT 2020 Question Paper - IPM Indore Verbal