Blood Relations
🔒 Log in to trackOne of the highest-yield reasoning topics: family-tree puzzles, pointing-at-photograph statements and symbol-coded chains, all solvable by drawing a small tree with parent-to-child arrows. Marks are lost to direction reversals and assumed genders, never to difficulty. A fixed decoding habit — inside-out for pointing questions, pairwise for coded strings, top-down for statement lists — makes nearly every question here a 30-45 second correct answer.
One page per subtopic: detailed notes, every question type, formulas, tricks and practice sets.
Every formula on one printable page, grouped by subtopic.
4 exam-level questions worked step by step.
58 questions — untimed practice or a timed test with analysis.
Track record in the exam
Questions per shift in recent SSC CGL papers.
Test difficulty mix (58 questions)
Question patterns exams keep repeating
Taken from previous-year papers. If a pattern is marked "very common", expect to see it in your exam.
Mixed-statement family tree
very common3-6 shuffled sentences describe one family; the question asks 'How is X related to Y?' or 'How many males are there?'.
How to solve: Ignore the given order. Find the person nobody calls a child, place them at the top, hang children below, join marriages on the same row, and read the shortest path. Tick genders while drawing for counting questions.
Example: Anil is the brother of Sunil. Sunil is the father of Mohan. Ritu is the daughter of Kavita. Mohan is the brother of Ritu. How is Kavita related to Anil?
Mohan and Ritu share parents; Ritu's mother is Kavita → Kavita is Sunil's wife → Anil's sister-in-law.
Pointing to a photograph
very common'Pointing to X, Y said, "He/She is the ___ of my ___'s ___"' — the tree hides in one spoken phrase.
How to solve: Replace 'my' with the speaker's name and decode inside-out, one layer per line. Test the self-reference first ('my mother's only child' = the speaker), then read the final relation in the direction the question asks.
Example: Pointing to a man, Sunita said, "He is the only son of my mother's mother's only child." How is the man related to Sunita?
Mother's mother's only child = Sunita's mother; her only son = Sunita's brother → Brother.
Symbol-coded relations
common'P + Q means P is the father of Q...' plus a coded string like A + B × C.
How to solve: Decode one symbol at a time into plain sentences, draw the mini-tree, and mark the gender each symbol fixes (a symbol fixes only its first person). Answer in the question's direction; a blank gender forces a neutral word or 'cannot be determined'.
Example: 'P + Q' means P is the son of Q; 'P ÷ Q' means P is the wife of Q. In 'A + B ÷ C', how is A related to C?
A is B's son and B is C's wife → A is C's son (the couple's child).
Chain relations
commonTwo or three short links in a row: 'A's son is B, B's daughter is C...'.
How to solve: Draw one arrow per sentence, count arrows between the asked pair (1 = parent/child, 2 = grand-, 3 = great-grand-), then fix the exact word with the gender.
Example: Mohan is Rekha's father. Ramesh is Mohan's father. How is Ramesh related to Rekha?
Two arrows up from Rekha, male → Grandfather.
Counting males/females
commonA full family description plus 'How many male/female members are there?'.
How to solve: Draw the whole tree, write +/− beside every name only where a word fixes the gender (including married-in spouses), then count ticks. Never count a name whose gender stayed blank.
Example: Dinesh and Gauri have a son Ashok. Ashok married Nutan; children Pankaj and Seema. Pankaj married Usha; son Tinku. How many males?
Males: Dinesh, Ashok, Pankaj, Tinku = 4.
In-law relations
commonWives, husbands, in-laws: 'wife of my son', 'father of my spouse', 'brother of my wife'.
How to solve: Apply the in-law map one crossing at a time: spouse's parent = father/mother-in-law; sibling's spouse or spouse's sibling = brother/sister-in-law; child's spouse = son/daughter-in-law.
Example: Rita's son is Amit. Amit's wife is Sneha. How is Sneha related to Rita?
Sneha married Rita's child → one crossing from 'daughter' → daughter-in-law.
Direction and gender traps
very commonShort statements with 'How is A related to B?' where reversing the direction or guessing a gender gives a plausible wrong option.
How to solve: Start from the person named after 'related to'. Mark genders only where words state them; if the needed gender is blank, pick the neutral option or 'cannot be determined'. Never leave a chain in your head — one arrow per sentence on paper.
Example: A and B are siblings. C is the mother of A and B. How is B related to C?
B is C's child, gender never stated → cannot be determined.
Build the coded expression
occasional'Which expression means M is the maternal uncle of K?' — the options are strings, not words.
How to solve: Write the target relation as two plain sentences ('M is the brother of K's mother'), then match symbols sentence by sentence. Reject options that change a gender or shift a generation.
Example: 'P + Q' = P is the brother of Q; 'P − Q' = P is the mother of Q. Which means 'M is the maternal uncle of K'?
Need M = brother of K's mother → M + L − K (M is L's brother, L is K's mother).