Blood relations questions, with answers

The questions, with answers

1. 1.What is the fastest reliable method for blood relations questions?

   In short: Draw a small family tree — one row per generation, a mark for gender, a line for marriage — and never hold the chain in your head.

   Use a fixed notation so the drawing takes seconds: + for male, − for female, a horizontal line for a marriage, a vertical line from parents down to children, siblings on the same row. Then read the sentence from the speaker's end. Introducing a woman, Vikram says, "Her father's wife is my mother's only daughter." Start from Vikram: his mother's only daughter is his sister, since Vikram is a man. That sister is the wife of the woman's father — so she is the woman's mother, and the woman is the daughter of Vikram's sister: his niece. Four relations, each one step on the drawing; written down, nothing needs remembering.

2. 2.Is 'the only son of my father' the speaker or the speaker's brother?

   In short: It depends on the speaker's gender: for a man it is himself, for a woman it is her brother — so check the name or pronoun first.

   'The only son of my father' names the one male child of the speaker's father. If the speaker is a man, he is a son of his father, so the only son is the speaker himself. If the speaker is a woman, the only son must be someone else — her brother. 'The only daughter of my mother' works the same way with the genders reversed. So when Meera, pointing to a boy, says "His father is the only son of my father", the boy's father is Meera's brother and the boy is her nephew. Put the same words in Manoj's mouth and the boy's father is Manoj himself: the boy is his son. Questions choose names so that the gender decides the answer; if a name is ambiguous, look for a pronoun elsewhere in the question.

3. 3.How do you solve coded blood relations like 'P × Q means P is the brother of Q'?

   In short: Translate one symbol at a time into one link of the tree, left to right, and record a gender only where the code states it.

   Say P × Q means P is the brother of Q, P ÷ Q means P is the mother of Q, P + Q means P is the father of Q, and P − Q means P is the sister of Q. What does J ÷ K × L + M say about J and M? Take the pairs in order. J ÷ K: J is K's mother. K × L: K is L's brother, so J is L's mother too. L + M: L is M's father. So J is the mother of M's father — M's grandmother, on the father's side. The code gives the genders of J, K and L but not of M, which is why the question asks how J is related to M and not the reverse. Asked how M is related to J, the honest answer is 'grandchild', or 'cannot be determined' if every option names a gender.

4. 4.What should you answer when a relation depends on a gender the question never gives?

   In short: Give a gender-neutral relation — child, sibling, cousin, grandchild — or choose 'cannot be determined' when every option names a gender.

   A is B's brother and B is C's mother. How is C related to A? B is A's sister and C is her child, so C is A's nephew or niece — and nothing in the question says which. If the options are nephew, niece, son and 'cannot be determined', the last is correct, not a guess. The trap runs the other way too: A's relation to C is fully determined, because A is male and the brother of C's mother, so A is C's maternal uncle. Before choosing, ask which person the question is about and whether that person's gender was ever stated. Examiners write these deliberately, so treat 'cannot be determined' as a real option rather than a distractor.

5. 5.How do you read 'pointing to a photograph' questions without mixing up the people?

   In short: Keep the speaker and the person pointed at apart, resolve the speaker's side of the sentence first, and attach 'his' or 'her' to the person in the photograph.

   Pointing to a photograph of a woman, Deepak says, "Her son's father is the only son of my mother." Resolve Deepak's side first: the only son of his mother is Deepak himself, since he is a man. So her son's father is Deepak — he is the father of the woman's son, which makes her Deepak's wife. The mistake this format invites is attaching the pronoun to the speaker: 'her son' is the son of the woman in the photograph, not of anyone Deepak mentions. Underline the pronoun, draw the person in the photograph first, and connect the speaker's clause to the drawing only at the end.

6. 6.Which relation names do placement tests expect you to know?

   In short: In-laws, the maternal and paternal split, and the step from nephew or niece to cousin — most wrong answers are a correct tree given the wrong name.

   A parent's brother is an uncle — paternal on the father's side, maternal on the mother's — and a parent's sister is an aunt. A sibling's child is a nephew or niece; a parent's sibling's child is a cousin, of either gender. A spouse's parent is a father- or mother-in-law, and a child's spouse is a son- or daughter-in-law. Brother-in-law covers two different people, a spouse's brother and a sister's husband, and sister-in-law likewise covers a spouse's sister and a brother's wife. A grandparent's other grandchildren are your siblings or cousins, depending on which of their children they descend from. Tests avoid relations English has no single word for, so if your tree produces one, recheck a step.

7. 7.How do you solve a family puzzle given in several statements?

   In short: Place first the people whose generation is certain — anyone called a grandparent, parent or grandchild — then attach the rest; draw nobody whose row is unknown.

   A family has six members: A, B, C, D, E and F. A and B are a married couple, and C and D are their children. C is married to E, and E is B's daughter-in-law. F is the daughter of C and E, and D is male. How is F related to D? Rows first: A and B on top, C and D below them, F on the third row. E is B's daughter-in-law, so E is female and married to B's son, which makes C male. D is C's brother and F is C's daughter, so D is F's paternal uncle and F is D's niece. Nothing says which of A and B is the man, and the question never needs it; a drawing makes that visible instead of tempting an assumption.

8. 8.How do you check a blood relations answer before moving on?

   In short: Read the chosen answer back as a sentence from the speaker's side and confirm it reproduces the original statement.

   If the answer to the Vikram question is niece, say it forward: she is my niece, so her mother is my sister, so her father's wife is my sister — my mother's only daughter. That matches the statement, so the answer stands. If the check produces a different sentence, one step of the tree was misread, usually a gender or a generation. The check takes a few seconds and catches the two errors this topic produces most: a relation read in the wrong direction, such as uncle for nephew, and a relation one generation off, such as cousin for nephew. It is the same habit as substituting an answer back into an equation.

How the diagnostic asks it

One question from the Aptitude bank, exactly as a sitting would show it. The bank has 7 on blood relations and 84 across Aptitude.