CAT 2025 Slot 1 · VARC · Question 15

CAT 2025 Slot 1 previous year question on Odd One Out, with the answer and a step-by-step solution.

Odd One OutVerbal AbilityType in the answer (TITA)Medium

Five jumbled 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 out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

  1. The Bayeux tapestry was, therefore, an obvious way to tell people about the downfall of the English and the rise of the Normans.
  2. So if we take expert in Anglo-Saxon culture Gale Owen-Crocker's idea that the tapestry was originally hung in a square with certain scenes facing each other, people would have stood in the centre.
  3. Art historian Linda Neagley has argued that pre-Renaissance people interacted with art visually, kinaesthetically (sensory perception through bodily movement) and physically.
  4. That would make it an 11th-century immersive space with scenes corresponding and echoing each other, drawing the viewer's attention, playing on their senses and understanding of the story they thought they knew.
  5. The Bayeux tapestry would have been hung at eye level to enable this.
Answer & solution

Answer: 1

Look for the thread that binds four of the five sentences, then test the fifth against it.

Sentence 3 states a general claim: pre-Renaissance people interacted with art visually, kinaesthetically and physically. Sentence 5 applies that claim to the tapestry – it 'would have been hung at eye level to enable this', where 'this' points straight back to the kind of interaction in 3. So 3 is followed by 5.

Sentence 2 opens with 'So if we take...', extending the reconstruction further – hung in a square, viewers standing in the centre. Sentence 4 begins 'That would make it an 11th-century immersive space', with 'That' referring to the square arrangement in 2. So 2 is followed by 4.

The four together run 3 – 5 – 2 – 4, a single argument about the tapestry as an immersive viewing experience.

Sentence 1 is about something else altogether: the political message of the tapestry, the downfall of the English and the rise of the Normans. It also carries 'therefore', which demands a preceding reason about propaganda – and no other sentence supplies one. Sentence 1 is the odd one out.

Shortcut: in an odd-sentence-out set, first chain the pronoun and connector links – 'this', 'That', 'So'. Whatever sentence is left with no link into the chain, and with a dangling connective of its own, is the answer. Here 'therefore' in sentence 1 has nothing to refer back to.

Hence, the answer is 1.

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