Over the past few years, in the CAT previous papers, para jumbles have had a recurrent appearance in the CAT VARC section. Parajumble questions are essential to practice by the aspirants. Practice the below important parajumbles questions from the CAT Previous Papers with detailed video solutions made by the CAT toppers. You can also get better understanding of these type of questions by taking numerous CAT mock tests. One can practice these questions by taking them in a test format or downloading them in a PDF format for free. Click on the below link to download the CAT Parajumbles questions with detailed video solutions PDF for free.
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Year | Weightage |
2023 | 6 |
2022 | 9 |
2021 | 15 |
2020 | 15 |
2019 | 14 |
2018 | 14 |
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Having an appreciation for the workings of another person’s mind is considered a prerequisite for natural language acquisition, strategic social interaction, reflexive thought, and moral judgment.
2. It is a ‘theory of mind’ though some scholars prefer to call it ‘mentalizing’ or ‘mindreading’, which is important for the development of one's cognitive abilities.
3. Though we must speculate about its evolutionary origin, we do have indications that the capacity evolved sometime in the last few million years.
4. This capacity develops from early beginnings in the first year of life to the adult’s fast and often effortless understanding of others’ thoughts, feelings, and intentions.
5. One of the most fascinating human capacities is the ability to perceive and interpret other people’s behaviour in terms of their mental states.
correct answer:-2
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. The banning of Northern Lights could be considered a precursor to censoring books for “moral”, world view or religious reasons.
2. Attempts to ban books are attempts to silence authors who have summoned immense courage in telling their stories.
3. Now the banning and challenging of books in the US has escalated to an unprecedented level.
4. The widely acclaimed fantasy novel Northern Lights was banned in some parts of the US, and was the second most challenged book in the US.
5. The American Library Association documented an unparalleled number of reported book challenges in 2022, about 2,500 unique titles.
correct answer:-2
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Boa Senior, who lived through the 2004 tsunami, the Japanese occupation and diseases brought by British settlers, was the last native of the island chain who was fluent in Bo.
2. The indigenous population has been steadily collapsing since the island chain was colonised by British settlers in 1858 and used for most of the following 100 years as a colonial penal colony.
3. Taking its name from a now-extinct tribe, Bo is one of the 10 Great Andamanese languages, which are thought to date back to pre-Neolithic human settlement of south-east Asia.
4. 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.
5. Though the language has been closely studied by researchers of linguistic history, Boa Senior spent the last few years of her life unable to converse with anyone in her mother tongue.
correct answer:-2
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. In English, there is no systematic rule for the naming of numbers; after ten, we have "eleven" and "twelve" and then the teens: "thirteen", "fourteen", "fifteen" and so on.
2. Even more confusingly, some English words invert the numbers they refer to: the word "fourteen" puts the four first, even though it appears last.
3. It can take children a while to learn all these words, and understand that "fourteen" is different from "forty".
4. For multiples of 10, English speakers switch to a different pattern: "twenty", "thirty", "forty" and so on.
5. If you didn't know the word for "eleven", you would be unable to just guess it - you might come up with something like "one-teen".
correct answer:-3
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Self-care particularly links to loneliness, behavioural problems, and negative academic outcomes.
2. “Latchkey children” refers to children who routinely return home from school to empty homes and take care of themselves for extended periods of time.
3. Although self-care generally points to negative outcomes, it is important to consider that the bulk of research has yet to track long-term consequences.
4. In research and practice, the phrase “children in self-care” has come to replace "latchkey" in an effort to more accurately reflect the nature of their circumstances.
5. Although parents might believe that self-care would be beneficial for development, recent research has found quite the opposite.
correct answer:-3
Five jumbled up sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4 and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.
1. Although hard skills have traditionally ruled the roost, some companies are moving away from choosing prospective hires based on technical abilities alone.
2. Companies are shaking off the old definition of an ideal candidate and ditching the idea of looking for the singularly perfect candidate altogether.
3. Now, some job descriptions are frequently asking for candidates to demonstrate soft skills, such as leadership or teamwork.
4. That’s not to say that practical know-how is no longer required - some jobs still call for highly specific expertise
5. The move towards prioritising soft skills “is a natural response to three years of the pandemic” says a senior recruiter at Cenlar FSB.
correct answer:-2
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. What precisely are the “unusual elements” that make a particular case so attractive to a certain kind of audience?
2 . It might be a particularly savage or unfathomable level of depravity, very often it has something to do with the precise amount of mystery involved.
3. Unsolved, and perhaps unsolvable cases offer something that “ordinary” murder doesn’t.
4. Why are some crimes destined for perpetual re-examination and others locked into permanent obscurity?
correct answer:-4123
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. Like the ants that make up a colony, no single neuron holds complex information like self-awareness, hope or pride.
2. Although the human brain is not yet understood enough to identify the mechanism by which emergence functions, most neurobiologists agree that complex interconnections among the parts give rise to qualities that belong only to the whole.
3. Nonetheless, the sum of all neurons in the nervous system generate complex human emotions like fear and joy, none of which can be attributed to a single neuron.
4. Human consciousness is often called an emergent property of the human brain.
correct answer:-4132
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. Centuries later formal learning is still mostly based on reading, even with the widespread use of other possible education-affecting technologies such as film, radio, and television.
2. One of the immediate and recognisable impacts of the printing press was on how people learned; in the scribal culture it primarily involved listening, so memorization was paramount.
3. The transformation of learners from listeners to readers was a complex social and cultural phenomenon, and it was not until the industrial era that the concept of universal literacy took root.
4. The printing press shifted the learning process, as listening and memorisation gradually gave way to reading and learning no longer required the presence of a mentor; it could be done privately.
correct answer:-2431
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. Algorithms hosted on the internet are accessed by many, so biases in AI models have resulted in much larger impact, adversely affecting far larger groups of people.
2. Though “algorithmic bias” is the popular term, the foundation of such bias is not in algorithms, but in the data; algorithms are not biased, data is, as algorithms merely reflect persistent patterns that are present in the training data.
3. Despite their widespread impact, it is relatively easier to fix AI biases than human-generated biases, as it is simpler to identify the former than to try to make people unlearn behaviors learnt over generations.
4. The impact of biased decisions made by humans is localised and geographically confined, but with the advent of AI, the impact of such decisions is spread over a much wider scale.
correct answer:-4123
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. Contemporary African writing like ‘The Bottled Leopard’ voices this theme using two children and two backgrounds to juxtapose two varying cultures.
2. Chukwuemeka Ike explores the conflict, and casts the Western tradition as condescending, enveloping and unaccommodating towards local African practice.
3. However, their views contradict the reality, for a rich and sustaining local African cultural ethos exists for all who care, to see and experience.
4. Western Christian concepts tend to deny or feign ignorance about the existence of a genuine and enduring indigenous African tradition.
correct answer:-4312
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. Veena Sahajwalla, a materials scientist at the University of New South Wales, believes there is a new way of solving this problem.
2. Her vision is for automated drones and robots to pick out components, put them into a small furnace and smelt them at specific temperatures to extract the metals one by one before they are sent off to manufacturers for reuse.
3. E-waste contains huge quantities of valuable metals, ceramics and plastics that could be salvaged and recycled, although currently not enough of it is.
4. She plans to build microfactories that can tease apart the tangle of materials in mobile phones, computers and other e-waste.
correct answer:-3142
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. The trajectory of cheerfulness through the self is linked to the history of the word ‘cheer’ which comes from an Old French meaning ‘face’.
2. Translations of the Bible into vernacular languages, expanded the noun ‘cheer’ into the more abstract ‘cheerful-ness’, something that circulates as an emotional and social quality defining the self and a moral community.
3. When you take on a cheerful expression, no matter what the state of your soul, your cheerfulness moves into the self: the interior of the self is changed by the power of cheer.
4. People in the medieval ‘Canterbury Tales’ have a ‘piteous’ or a ‘sober’ cheer; ‘cheer’ is an expression and a body part, lying at the intersection of emotions and physiognomy.
correct answer:-3142
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. If I wanted to sit indoors and read, or play Sonic the Hedgehog on a red-hot SegaMega Drive, I would often be made to feel guilty about not going outside to “enjoy it while it lasts”.
2. My mum, quite reasonably, wanted me and my sister out of the house, in the sun.
3. Tales of my mum’s idyllic-sounding childhood in the Sussex countryside, where trees were climbed by 8 am and streams navigated by lunchtime, were passed down to us like folklore.
4. To an introverted kid, that felt like a threat - and the feeling has stayed with me.
correct answer:-2314
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Women may prioritize cooking because they feel they alone are responsible for mediating a toxic and unhealthy food system.
2. Food is commonly framed through the lens of individual choice: you can choose to eat healthily.
3. This is particularly so in a neoliberal context where the state has transferred the responsibility for food onto individual consumers.
4. The individualized framing of choice appeals to a popular desire to experience agency, but draws away from the structural obstacles that stratify individual food choices.
correct answer:-2431
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. From chemical pollutants in the environment to the damming of rivers to invasive species transported through global trade and travel, every environmental issue is different and there is no single tech solution that can solve this crisis.
2. Discourse on the threat of environmental collapse revolves around cutting down emissions, but biodiversity loss and ecosystem collapse are caused by myriad and diverse reasons.
3. This would require legislation that recognises the rights of future generations and other species that allows the judiciary to uphold a much higher standard of environmental protection than currently possible.
4. Clearly, our environmental crisis requires large political solutions, not minor technological ones, so, instead of focusing on infinite growth, we could consider a path of stable-state economies, while preserving markets and healthy competition.
correct answer:-2143
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Some company leaders are basing their decisions on locating offices to foster innovation and growth, as their best-performing inventors suffered the greatest productivity losses when their commutes grew longer.
2. Shorter commutes support innovation by giving employees more time in the office and greater opportunities for in-person collaboration, while removing the physical strain of a long commute.
3. This is not always the case: remote work does not automatically lead to greater creativity and productivity as office water-cooler conversations are also very important for innovation.
4. Some see the link between long commutes and productivity as support for work-from-home scenarios, as many workers have grown accustomed to their commute-free arrangements during the pandemic.
correct answer:-2143
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. The more we are able to accept that our achievements are largely out of our control, the easier it becomes to understand that our failures, and those of others, are too.
2. But the raft of recent books about the limits of merit is an important correction to the arrogance of contemporary entitlement and an opportunity to reassert the importance of luck, or grace, in our thinking.
3. Meritocracy as an organising principle is an inevitable function of a free society, as we are designed to see our achievements as worthy of reward.
4. And that in turn should increase our humility and the respect with which we treat our fellow citizens, helping ultimately to build a more compassionate society.
correct answer:-3214
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. The creative element in product design has become of paramount importance as it is one of the few ways a firm or industry can sustain a competitive advantage over its rivals.
2. In fact, the creative element in the value of world industry would be larger still, if we added the contribution of the creative element in other industries, such as the design of tech accessories.
3. The creative industry is receiving a lot of attention today as its growth rate is faster than that of the world economy as a whole.
4. It is for this reason that today’s trade issues are increasingly involving intellectual property, as Western countries have an interest in protecting their revenues along with freeing trade in non-tangibles.
correct answer:-3214
The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3 and 4) below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer:
1. Various industrial sectors including retail, transit systems, enterprises, educational institutions, event organizing, finance, travel etc. have now started leveraging these beacons solutions to track and communicate with their customers.
2. A beacon fixed on to a shop wall enables the retailer to assess the proximity of the customer, and come up with a much targeted or personalized communication like offers, discounts and combos on products in each shelf.
3. Smartphones or other mobile devices can capture the beacon signals, and distance can be estimated by measuring received signal strength.
4. Beacons are tiny and inexpensive, micro-location-based technology devices that can send radio frequency signals and notify nearby Bluetooth devices of their presence and transmit information.
correct answer:-4312