CAT 50 Day Streak – Day 34
30 questions across VARC, DILR & QA · +3 for a correct answer · −1 for a wrong MCQ · no negative marking for TITA
VARC · Verbal Ability & Reading Comprehension
Q1 – Q10 0/10Attention has become a currency – traded, spent and depleted in an always-on world of pings, swipes and scrolls. In the past two decades, as the digital tide has risen, diagnoses of attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder (ADHD) haven’t merely inched up: they have more than doubled in adults and climbed by two-thirds in children, according to large US cohort studies. The coincidence is striking and worth unpacking.
ADHD has long been seen as a neurodevelopmental condition, typically showing up in childhood with hallmarks like distractibility, impulsivity and restlessness. For years, scientists have known that this condition runs in families; genetics plays a big role. Stimulant medications like Ritalin (methylphenidate) and Adderall (mixed amphetamine salts) – both of which boost the brain’s dopamine, a chemical messenger tied to focus and reward – are mainstays of treatment. They are often very helpful for those who need them. This is the ‘classical’ form of ADHD, one that is thought to be wired into the brain from early on. People with this condition might struggle to sit still or to finish a task, but with the right support (structure, medication) they often thrive. Their self-control and focus commonly improve as they mature.
Recently, though, we have been making a case that a broader conceptualisation of ADHD is warranted. In our work as psychiatrists, we began seeing a subset of patients whose ADHD-related symptoms were barely nudged using the usual stimulant-plus-structure playbook. This pattern signalled an attention dysregulation that requires different remedies from the classical approach – and, in turn, a shift in how we understand the disorder.
Rather than being a single, uniform condition, we believe ADHD is best understood through a spectrum model. This spectrum is anchored at one end by a form rooted in biology, and at the other end by patterns that are shaped by modern digital life. We call these poles Type I and Type II ADHD. Most people fall somewhere between these poles, with both biology and environment shaping their attention to some degree. But we can use the two labels to distinguish cases based on what seems to be the predominant factor. Type I ADHD, the classical form, reflects neurodevelopmental traits. But for someone who is more Type II, the dysregulation may emerge later, driven largely by overstimulation in a screen-saturated world.
This framework offers a new way to understand why attention struggles are rising – and how care might evolve in response. Picture someone who got through childhood without attention issues, only to develop them later, in their teens or 20s. They’re impulsive, scattered, easily pulled off track, but this isn’t how they’ve always been. What’s changed? Often, it’s their digital environment. Hours spent flipping between apps, scrolling through short reels, chasing social media likes or juggling screens might have disrupted their brain’s ability to regulate attention, prioritising rapid stimulation. Over time, this could have weakened their capacity for slower tasks, like reading a book, following a talk or even watching a slower movie.
Stimulants and structure are the “mainstays of treatment” for classical ADHD, and with that support patients “often thrive”. The authors then saw a subset whose symptoms were “barely nudged” by the same playbook, which suggests it works best for Type I.
A: it is the established treatment, not a new one. B: the passage never pairs it with less screen time. D: it is called “often very helpful”, never harmful or a cause of Type II.
The examples come right after the claim that digital habits prioritise “rapid stimulation” and “could have weakened their capacity for slower tasks”. Reading a book and watching a slower movie are examples of those slower tasks.
B: they are presented as casualties, not therapies. C: there is no comparison between generations. D: Type I isn’t discussed in that sentence.
Type II emerges later, in the teens or 20s, in someone who had no childhood attention problems, and is driven by a screen-saturated environment. D matches every element.
A: the passage rules out attention dysregulation as the cause. B: lifelong symptoms managed with medication describe Type I. C: the cause is a brain injury, not digital overstimulation.
The passage opens with a trend (ADHD diagnoses doubling alongside the digital tide). It then describes the classical view and its limit (patients “barely nudged” by the usual treatment). Finally it proposes the Type I–Type II spectrum model.
A: there is no historical tracing or comparison of treatments. B: there’s no call to action and little empirical evidence. D: the passage starts with a trend, not a model, and gives only one hypothetical case.
“That rough political parity is gone” announces that rural America is no longer split between parties. The next sentence spells it out: “For the first time … only one political party dominates rural and small-town America”. So the sentence belongs at blank 1, opening the paragraph.
By blanks 2–4 the paragraph has moved on to electorate share and institutional power. Announcing the loss of parity there would come after its own explanation.
- Over the century following the American Revolution, Grafton residents demonstrated mastery of their domain by transforming it into New Hampshire’s most intensively farmed region.
- In 1868, they banded together to protect their livestock from a bushy-tailed black wolf described in the local newspaper as four feet tall and seven feet long.
- They denuded hills and covered them with sweeping grasslands, hordes of sheep, and miles of stone walls.
- Fittingly, when the town was incorporated in the late 1700s, it took its name from the third Duke of Grafton.
- People built homes, mills, two churches, 12 schoolhouses, and several mines, including one that, in 1887, produced a 2,900-pound aquamarine crystal, the biggest ever found in the nation at that point.
The coherent paragraph is 1 → 3 → 5 → 2:
- 1: Residents transformed Grafton into an intensively farmed region.
- 3: “They” denuded hills and filled them with grasslands, sheep and stone walls.
- 5: People also built homes, mills, schools and mines.
- 2: In 1868 “they” banded together to protect their livestock from a wolf.
Sentence 4 is about where the town’s name comes from. The other four describe how residents mastered and developed the land, and “Fittingly” has nothing in them to refer to.
Most of the passage unpacks Aristotle’s definition: damage to what one cares about, believed to be wrongful, plus a built-in desire for payback that is “a conceptual part of what anger is”. B captures these elements.
A adds a contrast with “resolution” that the passage never makes. C gives anger a positive role, which contradicts “a stupid way to run one’s life”. D brings in modern psychology, which isn’t mentioned.
The paragraph sets up a problem: the 1994 law covered only married survivors, yet most of Líderes’ women “weren’t married at all”. The sentence gives the fix (Mily pushed to cover unmarried survivors, and the U visa passed). “It was a major win” then praises that outcome.
At blanks 1–3, the limitation to married survivors hasn’t been fully set up yet, so the solution would arrive before the problem.
- What’s more, sometimes different kinds of moral good straight-up conflict with each other.
- And the more you try to force yourself to be that, the harder it’ll be for you to actually help others, because you’ll just be so burned out.
- It can even lead to paralysis.
- As you’ve already discovered, the optimizing mindset is exhausting — you end up expending a lot of precious mental resources that you could be spending on something else.
- Given that this complexity is baked into the human condition, it’s impossible to be a perfect optimizing machine.
Detailed solution coming soon.
- Finally, on July 11, India’s air safety organization, the Aircraft Accident Investigation Bureau (AAIB), issued a preliminary report into the cause of the disaster.
- The 15-page report pinpointed a dark and disturbing factor as the reason for the crash: Shortly after takeoff, someone or something cut the flow of fuel to both engines, almost simultaneously.
- The weeks that followed saw rampant speculation, AI-generated hoaxes, and conspiracy theories.
- This caused a brief but fatal dual-engine shutdown that proved impossible for the plane to recover from.
The order runs like this:
- 3: “The weeks that followed” the crash were full of speculation and hoaxes.
- 1: “Finally”, the AAIB issued its preliminary report.
- 2: “The 15-page report” said fuel to both engines was cut.
- 4: “This caused” the fatal dual-engine shutdown.
DILR · Data Interpretation & Logical Reasoning
Q11 – Q20 0/10Six tourists Alex, Britney, Carlos, Diana, Eden and Fay, are to be assigned to four guides: Jatin, Kuldeep, Luis and Mohsin. Each tourist is assigned to exactly one guide, with at least one tourist assigned to each guide. Each tourist speaks exactly one of the languages spoken by his or her guide and speaks no other language.
- Jatin speaks only Mandarin.
- Kuldeep speaks only French and Spanish.
- Luis speaks only Mandarin and French.
- Mohsin speaks only Spanish and Arabic.
The following rules govern the assignment of the tourists to the guides:
- At least Alex and Britney are assigned to Luis.
- At least Diana is assigned to Mohsin.
- If Carlos is assigned to Kuldeep, then Eden speaks Mandarin.
- Fixed. Alex and Britney go to Luis, and Diana goes to Mohsin.
- Free. Carlos, Eden and Fay remain. Jatin and Kuldeep each need at least one of them, so at most one of the three can go anywhere else.
- Consequence. Mohsin gets Diana plus at most one more, so at most 2 tourists. D must be true.
A is false if Kuldeep gets Eden and Fay (with Carlos at Jatin). B is false if the spare tourist goes to Luis. C is false if Jatin gets two.
Diana (with Mohsin) speaks Spanish or Arabic, so Fay does too, and neither speaks French. Jatin needs a Mandarin speaker, which must be Carlos or Eden.
The best case: Alex and Britney speak French with Luis, Carlos speaks French with Kuldeep, and Eden goes to Jatin and speaks Mandarin (which satisfies the Carlos–Kuldeep rule). Maximum French speakers = 3.
Two of Carlos, Eden and Fay go to Kuldeep and one goes to Jatin. If Carlos is at Kuldeep, Eden must speak Mandarin, so Eden must be at Jatin. The possibilities are Kuldeep {Carlos, Fay} with Jatin Eden, or Kuldeep {Eden, Fay} with Jatin Carlos.
- A: Kuldeep {Carlos, Fay} with Carlos speaking Spanish, and Eden at Jatin speaking Mandarin ✓
- B and C: Fay is always at Kuldeep, so she can’t speak Mandarin ✗
- D: Eden and Carlos would both be at Kuldeep, which breaks the rule ✗
Alex and Britney speak Mandarin or French, so Eden and Fay speak the same.
- All Mandarin. Eden and Fay are at Jatin or Luis, so Carlos must be at Kuldeep (French or Spanish). French speakers: 0 or 1.
- All French. Eden and Fay are at Kuldeep or Luis, so Carlos must be at Jatin and speaks Mandarin. French speakers: 4.
A: Carlos is only ever at Jatin or Kuldeep, so he can’t speak Arabic ✗. B: French speakers are 0, 1 or 4, never exactly two ✗. C: possible in the all-French case ✓. D: only Diana can speak Arabic ✗.
Mili, Ehsan, Ruby, Ishwar, Tina and Sonu are the top 6 students of an MBA college. They appeared in their trimester examination comprising 5 subjects: Organizational Behaviour (OB), Quantitative Methods (QM), Managerial Economics (ME), Financial Accounting (FA) and Business Communication (BC).
The table below gives their GPA in the five subjects. The GPA is calculated in the following manner:
GPA of a student = 10 × Score of the studentMax score in that subject
| OB | QM | ME | FA | BC | |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mili | 9.5 | 8.67 | 8.67 | 8 | 7.86 |
| Ehsan | 8 | 8.4 | 7.67 | 10 | 9.17 |
| Ruby | 9 | 10 | 9 | 8.5 | 7.5 |
| Ishwar | 7.75 | 8.8 | 7 | 9.25 | 10 |
| Tina | 10 | 8 | 7.78 | 8.75 | 8.33 |
| Sonu | 8.75 | 7.6 | 10 | 8.25 | 8.57 |
- The maximum marks in all subjects are 100.
- The marks obtained by every student in all subjects are integers greater than 50 but less than 100.
- The marks obtained by Tina in all subjects are multiples of 10.
A student with GPA 10 holds the subject’s top score M. Every other score = GPA × M/10 must be a whole number from 51 to 99, and Tina’s scores must be multiples of 10.
- OB (Tina tops). 7.75 = 31/40, 8.75 = 7/8 and 9.5 = 19/20, so M is a multiple of 40. Tina’s M is a multiple of 10 in 51–99, so M = 80.
- QM (Ruby tops). 8.4, 8.8 and 7.6 need M to be a multiple of 25; 8.67 = 13/15 needs a multiple of 15. So M = 75 (Tina 60).
- ME (Sonu tops). 7.67 = 23/30 and 7.78 = 7/9, so M = 90 (Tina 70).
- FA (Ehsan tops). 9.25, 8.75 and 8.25 need a multiple of 40, so M = 80 (Tina 70).
- BC (Ishwar tops). 7.86 = 11/14, 9.17 = 11/12, 8.33 = 5/6 and 8.57 = 6/7, so M = 84 (Tina 70).
| Marks | OB | QM | ME | FA | BC | Total |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| Mili | 76 | 65 | 78 | 64 | 66 | 349 |
| Ehsan | 64 | 63 | 69 | 80 | 77 | 353 |
| Ruby | 72 | 75 | 81 | 68 | 63 | 359 |
| Ishwar | 62 | 66 | 63 | 74 | 84 | 349 |
| Tina | 80 | 60 | 70 | 70 | 70 | 350 |
| Sonu | 70 | 57 | 90 | 66 | 72 | 355 |
The topper is Ruby with 359.
From the table in Q15, the subject toppers scored 80 (OB), 75 (QM), 90 (ME), 80 (FA) and 84 (BC). The highest is Sonu’s 90 in ME.
From the table in Q15, the lowest score is Sonu’s 57 in QM.
From the table in Q15: 76 + 65 + 78 + 64 + 66 = 349.
Sonu’s scores in order: 57, 66, 70, 72, 90. Median = 70 and mean = 355/5 = 71. Difference = 1.
From the table in Q15, each student’s highest score is: Mili 78, Ehsan 80, Ruby 81, Ishwar 84, Tina 80, Sonu 90. Only Mili stays below 80 in every subject, so the answer is 1.
QA · Quantitative Ability
Q21 – Q30 0/10Let AB = l and BE = m (so BC = 2m). Then 2l + 2m = 20, so l + m = 10. In right triangle ABE, l2 + m2 = 81.
2lm = (l + m)2 − (l2 + m2) = 100 − 81 = 19. Area = l × 2m = 19.
For a cubic, the third differences are constant. First differences: 2, 4, 8. Second differences: 2, 4. Third difference: 2.
Extending: the next second difference is 6, the next first difference is 14, so f(5) = 16 + 14 = 30.
Present ages: Ritik = 3k + 7, Satish = 5k + 7, Tarak = 5(5k + 7)/4.
(3k + 7) + (25k + 35)/4 = 62 gives 37k = 185, so k = 5. Ritik = 22, Satish = 32 (and Tarak = 40).
Difference = 10 years.
Difference of roots = √(a2 − 4·1·1) = √(a2 − 4). The condition √(a2 − 4) < √5 gives a2 < 9, so a ∈ (−3, 3).
(For |a| < 2 the roots are complex. The intended answer applies the condition algebraically, and (−3, 3) is the only option consistent with a2 < 9.)
Detailed solution coming soon.
Let the work = 1. Then p + a = 1/60 and a + n = 1/80.
25p + 35a + 65n = 25(p + a) + 10(a + n) + 55n = 25/60 + 10/80 + 55n = 1. So 55n = 1 − 13/24 = 11/24, and n = 1/120.
a = 1/80 − 1/120 = 1/240 and p = 1/60 − 1/240 = 1/80. Together: 1/80 + 1/240 + 1/120 = 6/240 = 1/40, so 40 days.
The ring between radii k − 1 and k has area π(k2 − (k − 1)2) = π(2k − 1). The disc (k = 1) is red, so the green rings are those with even k = 2, 4, …, 100.
Green area = π Σ (4j − 1) for j = 1 to 50 = π(4 × 1275 − 50) = 5050π sq cm.
The right side is even, so q2 must be even, which makes q = 2.
Then 2p3 − 4 = 2(p + 2)2, i.e. p3 − p2 − 4p − 6 = 0, and p = 3 works (27 − 9 − 12 − 6 = 0).
Check: 54 − 4 = 50 = 2 × 25 ✓. p + q = 5.
Let PS = x, so PQ = √3x. Area = √3x2 = 28√3, so x2 = 28.
Triangle APS is equilateral with side x. In triangle PBQ, BQ = PQ/tan 60° = x. So BC = x + x + x = 3x.
Place B at the origin: P = (x, √3x) and C = (3x, 0). PC = √((2x)2 + 3x2) = √7·x = √7 × √28 = 14.
After 4 operations, the juice fraction is (1 − 12/V)4 = 256/2401 = (4/7)4.
1 − 12/V = 4/7, so 12/V = 3/7 and V = 28 litres.
Correct: 0 · Wrong: 0 · Accuracy: 0%
Keep the streak alive. See you tomorrow for Day 35.