CAT 2022 Previous Year Question Paper

Passage 1

Few words in food writing are used as confidently, or examined as rarely, as 'authentic'. A restaurant praised for authentic cooking is understood to serve dishes as they are really made in their place of origin, and a dish condemned as inauthentic is assumed to have been diluted for unfamiliar palates. The judgement carries moral weight: authenticity suggests honesty and respect, and its absence a kind of fraud.

Yet the standard is harder to locate than its users imply. Cuisines have never stood still. Ingredients now treated as essential to many national cuisines were introduced within the last few centuries: chillies, tomatoes and potatoes crossed the oceans from the Americas only after the voyages of the late fifteenth century, and transformed kitchens that had managed without them for millennia. A recipe frozen at any particular moment is therefore a snapshot of a process, and to call that snapshot authentic is to privilege one stage of change over all the others, usually the stage remembered by the person making the judgement.

There is also the question of whose cooking counts. Within any region, households differ, as do the dishes of the rich and the poor, of the city and the village, of festivals and ordinary days. Critics who pronounce on authenticity often rely on a narrow selection of these, sometimes the version that was first presented to outsiders. The migrant cook who adapts a dish to the ingredients available in a new country is then accused of departing from a standard that may never have been the cook's own.

None of this means that every claim about food is arbitrary. A cook can be more or less skilful, a dish more or less carefully prepared, and diners can reasonably prefer one version to another. Nor is adaptation always innocent: a cuisine stripped of its characteristic flavours to suit a timid market has lost something, and it is fair to say so. The difficulty lies in treating a contested and changing practice as if it had a single fixed original against which every version can be measured.

A more useful vocabulary might replace authenticity with questions that can actually be answered. Is the dish made with care? Does it reflect a knowledge of the tradition it draws on, including that tradition's own long history of borrowing? Does the cook understand why particular ingredients and techniques matter, so that substitutions are choices rather than accidents? Such questions allow for criticism without requiring an imaginary purity, and they extend to the migrant cook the same freedom to innovate that the tradition itself has always enjoyed.

1. Suppose a critic dismisses a dish as inauthentic because it uses an ingredient that reached the region only two centuries ago. It can be inferred that the author would find this reasoning

   1. persuasive, because recent ingredients always dilute a cuisine.
   2. unpersuasive, because many ingredients now considered essential to cuisines are themselves relatively recent arrivals.
   3. persuasive, provided the critic has eaten the dish in its place of origin.
   4. irrelevant, because the author believes ingredients do not affect flavour.
   Answer and explanation

   Answer: B (unpersuasive, because many ingredients now considered essential to cuisines are themselves relatively recent arrivals.)

   Paragraph two argues that chillies, tomatoes and potatoes are recent yet now central, so recency cannot by itself make an ingredient inauthentic. D contradicts the concern with 'characteristic flavours'.

2. The discussion of 'whose cooking counts' implies that

   1. regional cuisines are uniform across social classes.
   2. the standard used to judge authenticity is often a selective version of a varied tradition.
   3. migrant cooks are generally less skilled than cooks in the place of origin.
   4. critics should eat only in private homes.
   Answer and explanation

   Answer: B (the standard used to judge authenticity is often a selective version of a varied tradition.)

   The paragraph notes variety across households, classes and occasions and says critics often rely 'on a narrow selection', sometimes the version first shown to outsiders.

3. Which of the following statements is the author most likely to endorse?

   1. All judgements about food are a matter of arbitrary taste.
   2. Migrant cooks ought to reproduce dishes exactly as they are made in their home region.
   3. The word 'authentic' should be banned from restaurant reviews.
   4. Removing a cuisine's characteristic flavours to please cautious diners can rightly be criticised.
   Answer and explanation

   Answer: D (Removing a cuisine's characteristic flavours to please cautious diners can rightly be criticised.)

   Paragraph four: a cuisine stripped of its characteristic flavours 'has lost something, and it is fair to say so'. A is explicitly denied; B runs against the closing argument; C is stronger than the author's proposal of a 'more useful vocabulary'.

4. The questions proposed in the final paragraph are meant to

   1. prove that no dish can be criticised.
   2. help diners identify the oldest version of a recipe.
   3. discourage cooks from substituting ingredients.
   4. allow meaningful criticism of cooking without assuming a single fixed original.
   Answer and explanation

   Answer: D (allow meaningful criticism of cooking without assuming a single fixed original.)

   They 'allow for criticism without requiring an imaginary purity'. They accept substitutions as long as they are deliberate choices (ruling out C) and are not about finding the oldest version (B).

Verbal ability

5. The four sentences below, labelled 1 to 4, form a coherent paragraph when properly ordered. Type in the correct order as a sequence of four numbers. 1. Its larger effect, however, often comes from what it makes possible afterwards. 2. For this reason, ecologists increasingly argue that the decision to build a road is, in effect, a decision about the whole region it opens up. 3. Loggers, settlers and hunters follow the route deep into areas that were previously hard to reach. 4. A new road through a forest is usually judged by the trees it removes. (type in your answer)

   Answer and explanation

   Answer: 4132

   4 introduces the usual judgement. 1 ('Its larger effect, however') turns to the bigger effect. 3 describes what follows the road. 2 ('For this reason') concludes. Order: 4-1-3-2.

6. Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the sentence that does not fit and type in its number. 1. Early photographs required their subjects to sit motionless through long exposures. 2. Studios provided hidden braces to hold the head steady during the wait. 3. This is one reason why so many portraits from the period show stiff, unsmiling faces. 4. Some historians add that a broad smile was then thought undignified in a formal portrait. 5. Painted portraits, by contrast, were often commissioned to mark a marriage or an inheritance. (type in your answer)

   Answer and explanation

   Answer: 5

   Sentences 1–4 explain why early photographic portraits look stiff and unsmiling (exposure times, braces, conventions). Sentence 5 concerns the occasions for commissioning painted portraits and does not address that question.

7. The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage. Cities often respond to traffic congestion by widening roads. For a while, journeys become faster. But quicker journeys encourage people to drive more often and to live further away, and within a few years the new lanes fill up. Adding road capacity, in other words, tends to generate the traffic that eventually uses it, so that congestion returns to roughly its earlier level.

   1. Extra road capacity tends to attract additional traffic until congestion returns.
   2. Widening roads has no effect on journey times at any stage.
   3. People generally prefer to live far from city centres.
   4. Cities should ban private cars to end congestion.
   Answer and explanation

   Answer: A (Extra road capacity tends to attract additional traffic until congestion returns.)

   The passage says new capacity generates traffic that fills it. B contradicts 'for a while, journeys become faster'; C and D are not claimed.

Set 1

A college surveyed 120 students about three clubs: Music, Drama and Sports. The findings were:

1. 32 students belong to none of the three clubs. 2. The Music club has 42 members, the Drama club 33 and the Sports club 45. 3. 4 students belong to all three clubs. 4. 24 students belong to exactly two of the clubs. 5. 12 students belong to both Music and Drama, and 14 belong to both Music and Sports (in each case including those who belong to all three).

8. How many students belong to the Sports club only? (type in your answer)

   Answer and explanation

   Answer: 25

   Music and Drama only = 12 − 4 = 8. Music and Sports only = 14 − 4 = 10. Drama and Sports only = 24 − 8 − 10 = 6. Sports only = 45 − 10 − 6 − 4 = 25.

9. How many students belong to exactly one club?

   1. 56
   2. 60
   3. 64
   4. 68
   Answer and explanation

   Answer: B (60)

   Music only = 42 − 8 − 10 − 4 = 20, Drama only = 33 − 8 − 6 − 4 = 15, Sports only = 25. Total = 60. Check: 60 + 24 + 4 + 32 = 120.

10. How many students belong to Drama and Sports but not to Music?

    1. 4
    2. 6
    3. 8
    4. 10
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: B (6)

    Exactly-two total is 24, of which Music–Drama only is 8 and Music–Sports only is 10, leaving 6 for Drama–Sports only.

11. The next term, 10 students who were in no club join the Drama club only, and every student who was in Music and Sports but not Drama also joins Drama. How many students are then in exactly two clubs?

    1. 14
    2. 18
    3. 24
    4. 34
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: A (14)

    The 10 Music-and-Sports-only students move into all three clubs, so exactly-two falls from 24 to 8 + 6 = 14. The new Drama-only members do not affect this count.

12. The price of sugar rises by 60%. By what percentage must a household cut its consumption to keep its spending on sugar unchanged?

    1. 33.3%
    2. 37.5%
    3. 40%
    4. 60%
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: B (37.5%)

    New consumption = 1/1.6 = 0.625 of the old, a cut of 37.5%.

13. Towns A and B are 420 km apart. A train leaves A for B at 6 a.m. at 60 km/h. Another train leaves B for A at 8 a.m. at 90 km/h. How far from A, in km, do the trains meet? (type in your answer)

    Answer and explanation

    Answer: 240

    By 8 a.m. the first train has covered 120 km, leaving 300 km between them. They close at 150 km/h, so they meet 2 hours later, at 10 a.m. The first train has then gone 120 + 2 × 60 = 240 km from A.

14. What is the sum of all real values of x that satisfy 3²ˣ − 10 × 3ˣ + 9 = 0?

    1. 2
    2. 0
    3. 1
    4. 3
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: A (2)

    Let y = 3ˣ: y² − 10y + 9 = 0, so y = 1 or 9, i.e. x = 0 or 2. Sum = 2.

15. How many natural numbers less than 1000 have no common factor with 1000 other than 1? (type in your answer)

    Answer and explanation

    Answer: 400

    1000 = 2³ × 5³. Numbers coprime to 1000 below it: 1000 × (1 − 1/2)(1 − 1/5) = 400 (Euler's totient).

16. What is the area of a sector of a circle of radius 14 cm with a central angle of 45°? (Take π = 22/7.)

    1. 66 cm²
    2. 88 cm²
    3. 154 cm²
    4. 77 cm²
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: D (77 cm²)

    Area = (45/360) × (22/7) × 14² = (1/8) × 616 = 77 cm².

17. The diagonals of a rhombus are in the ratio 3 : 4 and its perimeter is 40 cm. What is its area in cm²? (type in your answer)

    Answer and explanation

    Answer: 96

    Side = 10 cm. The diagonals bisect each other at right angles, so half-diagonals 3k and 4k satisfy (3k)² + (4k)² = 10², giving k = 2. Diagonals are 12 and 16, and area = ½ × 12 × 16 = 96 cm².

18. In how many ways can 6 identical chocolates be distributed among 3 children so that each child gets at least one?

    1. 15
    2. 10
    3. 20
    4. 28
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: B (10)

    Give each child one chocolate first, then distribute the remaining 3 freely: C(3 + 2, 2) = 10. (Equivalently, C(5, 2) = 10.)

19. The simple interest on a sum at 12% per annum for 3 years is ₹4,320. What is the sum?

    1. ₹10,000
    2. ₹14,400
    3. ₹12,000
    4. ₹16,000
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: C (₹12,000)

    P × 12 × 3 / 100 = 4,320, so P = 4,320 × 100 / 36 = ₹12,000.

20. What is the minimum value of x² − 8x + 21 over all real x?

    1. 5
    2. 4
    3. 6
    4. 21
    Answer and explanation

    Answer: A (5)

    x² − 8x + 21 = (x − 4)² + 5, which is smallest (5) at x = 4.