Statements: All cats are dogs. All dogs are birds. Conclusions: I. All cats are birds. II. Some birds are cats.

Both follow. Cats sit inside dogs, dogs inside birds, so all cats are birds. And since every cat is a bird, some birds are cats.

Statements: Some pens are books. No book is a bag. Conclusions: I. Some pens are not bags. II. No pen is a bag.

Only I follows. The pens that are books cannot be bags, so some pens are not bags. But other pens may still be bags — II is not certain.

Statements: All roses are flowers. Some flowers are red. Conclusions: I. Some roses are red. II. All red things are roses.

Neither follows. The red flowers may all lie outside the roses, so I fails. Nothing puts every red thing inside roses, so II fails too.

Free quiz · 9 questions

Syllogism quiz

Nine questions in the exact format IBPS and SBI prelims use: two statements, two conclusions, five options. Pick an answer and the reasoning appears straight away — no sign-up, nothing to submit.

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How to answer a syllogism in under a minute

Treat both statements as true, even when they sound absurd. A conclusion follows only if it is true in every diagram the statements allow. So the fast method is to hunt for one diagram where the conclusion fails — if you find it, the conclusion does not follow. "Some A are B" from "All A are B" always follows; "All B are A" never does.

The "either-or" trap

When neither conclusion is definite but the two are about the same pair and one must be true — "Some X are Y" and "No X is Y" — the answer is either I or II. Questions 4 and 6 above test exactly this. Check it only after both conclusions have failed on their own.

Possibility questions

Newer IBPS papers ask whether something "is a possibility". That is a weaker test: it follows unless the statements rule it out. "All apples being fruits" is possible when only "some apples are mangoes, all mangoes are fruits" is given, because nothing says any apple is outside fruits.

After the quiz

A nine-question set shows you which rule you are missing; it does not build speed. DeducePuzzles gives you one new reasoning puzzle each day — the topic rotates through syllogism, seating, ranking and the other prelims families — with a server-timed clock, a streak and a worked solution once you finish.

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