CAT 2023 Slot 1 · VARC · Question 9
CAT 2023 Slot 1 previous year question on Odd One Out, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.
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".
Answer & solution
Answer: 3
The paragraph is about how irregular English number names are.
Sentence 1 opens: English has no systematic rule – 'eleven', 'twelve', then the teens.
Sentence 5 shows the problem: if you didn't know 'eleven', you couldn't guess it.
Sentence 4 adds another irregularity: multiples of ten follow a different pattern.
Sentence 2 adds a further one with 'Even more confusingly': 'fourteen' puts the four first. The sequence 1-5-4-2 is a list of irregularities.
Sentence 3 is about children taking time to learn these words – an effect on learners, not another feature of the naming system.
Shortcut: when four sentences describe features of something, the odd one is often the sentence about people's response to it.
Hence, the answer is 3.
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