CAT 2025 Slot 1 · VARC · Question 22

CAT 2025 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

The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.

Sentence: "Everything is old-world, traditional techniques from Mexico," Ava emphasizes.

Paragraph: The sisters embrace the ways their great-grandfather built and repaired instruments. ____(1) ____. When crafting a Mexican guitarrón used in mariachi music, they use tacote wood for the top of the instrument. Once the wood is cut, they carve the neck and heel from a single block using tools like hand saws, chisels and sandpaper rather than modern power tools — and believe that this traditional method improves the tone of the instrument. ____(2) ____. Their store has a three-year waitlist for instruments that take months to create. ____(3) ____. The family's artisanship has attracted stars like Los Lobos, who own custom guitars made by all three generations of the Delgado family. ____(4) ____. For the sisters, involvement in the family business started at an early age. They each built their first instruments at age 9.

  1. A

    Option 3

  2. B

    Option 4

  3. C

    Option 2

  4. D

    Option 1

Pick an option, then check.
Answer & solution

Answer: Option D

The missing sentence is a quotation summing up one idea: everything is old-world, traditional Mexican technique.

Blank 1 sits between the opening line – the sisters embrace the ways their great-grandfather built instruments – and the detailed account of that very method: tacote wood, neck and heel carved from a single block, hand saws and chisels instead of power tools. The quotation restates the opening claim and then introduces the evidence for it, which is exactly how a quotation of this kind functions.

Blank 2 comes after the craftsmanship description and before the waitlist sentence, which is about demand and time, a different idea. A quotation about technique placed there would be looking backwards with nothing ahead to support.

Blank 3 precedes the sentence about Los Lobos and celebrity customers – again reputation and demand, not technique.

Blank 4 precedes the sisters' childhood and their first instruments at age 9. That is biography, and the quotation has no bearing on it.

Shortcut: a general quotation belongs immediately before the details that illustrate it, not after them. The only run of technique details in this paragraph follows blank 1.

The answer is 'Option 1', which is listed fourth. Hence, the answer is option 4.

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