IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · Question 1

The idiom. To hide in plain sight means to remain unnoticed precisely because one is openly visible and appears ordinary.

Why it fits. The spies “take the guise of innocuous secretaries or researchers” — they are not concealed at all; they are in full view, and their very ordinariness is the concealment. That paradox is exactly what the idiom names.

Why the others fail:

(b) hiding documents very craftily — shifts the object. The sentence is about how the spies escape notice, not about where papers are kept.

(c) hiding from watchful eyes — the ordinary sense of hiding, which contradicts “take the guise of” an open, visible role. If they were hiding from view, the disguise would be pointless.

(d) hiding within everyone’s sight — a near-miss that captures the idea but is not the fixed form. The idiom is in plain sight, not within everyone’s sight.

Answer: Option 1

Shortcut. The word innocuous is the signal. It tells you the concealment works through appearing harmless and visible, not through being out of view — which rules out (c) immediately, since it means the opposite.

Then (d) is the standard “right idea, wrong wording” distractor. Idioms are fixed strings: in plain sight cannot become within everyone’s sight any more than in the nick of time can become at the nick of time.

A useful family to revise together: hide in plain sight, an open secret, under one’s nose, the elephant in the room — all about things visible yet unremarked.