IPMAT Indore 2022 · Verbal Ability · Question 16

Step 1 — follow the logic the paragraph sets up. Three steps are given:

The Indus script exists but is undeciphered.

The Mesopotamian script has been deciphered.

Archaeologists hope to find a text containing both.

A text in two scripts, one already readable, is a bilingual key — the same principle by which the Rosetta Stone unlocked Egyptian hieroglyphs. The obvious conclusion is that the Indus script could then be read.

Step 2 — confirm with option (a).

“They will then be able to decode the Indus valley language.”

This is precisely the payoff the preceding sentence promises, and it closes the loop opened by “scholars have been unable to decipher that script”. ✔

Step 3 — eliminate.

(b) Relative age — a bilingual text does not establish which civilisation is older, and age is never raised in the paragraph.

(c) The nature of relationships — plausible as a side benefit, but vague, and it does not use the key fact that one script is already deciphered. That detail would be wasted.

(d) Proving trade — again a possible by-product, but the paragraph’s explicit problem is decipherment, not commerce.

Answer: Option 1

Shortcut. Ask which option uses every fact the paragraph supplies. The detail that the Mesopotamian script is “already deciphered” is doing deliberate work — it is only useful if the aim is to read the other script.

Options (c) and (d) would be equally true of any joint text, deciphered or not, so they leave that detail idle. The correct completion in a para-completion question almost always consumes the paragraph’s most specific detail.

The real-world parallel is worth telling students: this is the Rosetta Stone method — a known script beside an unknown one is how decipherment works.