CAT 2024 Slot 1 · VARC · Question 10

CAT 2024 Slot 1 previous year question on Sentence Completion and Insertion, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Sentence Completion and InsertionVerbal AbilityMultiple choiceMedium

There is a sentence that is missing in the paragraph below. Look at the paragraph and decide where (option 1, 2, 3, or 4) the following sentence would best fit.

Sentence: The brain isn't organized the way you might set up your home office or bathroom medicine cabinet.

Paragraph: ____(1)____. You can't just put things anywhere you want to. The evolved architecture of the brain is haphazard and disjointed, and incorporates multiple systems, each of which has a mind of its own. ____(2)____. Evolution doesn't design things and it doesn't build systems—it settles on systems that, historically, conveyed a survival benefit. There is no overarching, grand planner engineering the systems so that they work harmoniously together. ____(3)____. The brain is more like a big, old house with piecemeal renovations done on every floor, and less like new construction. ____(4)____.

  1. A
    Option 4
  2. B
    Option 2
  3. C
    Option 1
  4. D
    Option 3
Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option C

The missing sentence sets up a negative comparison: the brain is NOT organised like a home office or a medicine cabinet. The sentence right after blank 1 – 'You can't just put things anywhere you want to' – makes no sense on its own, because 'things' and 'you' have no context. After the missing sentence, it becomes the natural follow-up: in your own cabinet you can put things wherever you like; in the brain you cannot. Blank 1 also opens the paragraph, so the missing sentence becomes its topic sentence.

Blank 2 would split the description of the brain's 'haphazard and disjointed' architecture from the explanation of why evolution produces it – a cause-and-effect pair that must stay together.

Blank 3 would put a second house analogy just before the paragraph's own closing analogy ('a big, old house with piecemeal renovations'), which is redundant.

Blank 4 comes after that closing analogy; reintroducing the home-office comparison there would end the paragraph on a weaker, repeated image.

Shortcut: when a paragraph's first sentence after blank 1 depends on context it does not supply ('You can't just put things anywhere'), blank 1 is almost always the answer.

The answer is 'Option 1', which is listed third. Hence, the answer is option 3.

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