Exam Pattern, Scoring and Puzzle Strategy
This chapter maps where puzzle and sentence-arrangement questions sit in the IBPS PO, SBI PO and IBPS Clerk examinations, and what the 2026-27 notices say about the question counts, timings and marking scheme. It then shows the arithmetic behind negative marking, how a puzzle set is built, and how to split a 20-minute section across question types. Where sources disagree, the chapter shows the disagreement rather than picking one figure.
KarmSakha preparation topics covered
- Which exams and which question families this book serves
- Prelims question counts, marks and timings for IBPS PO, SBI PO and IBPS Clerk
- Mains objective reasoning and computer aptitude, including sectional cut-offs
- Negative marking and the expected value of a guess
- How bank puzzle sets are built and the question types inside them
- Time budgeting for a 20-minute reasoning section
- Common scoring traps and a self-audit of practice errors
Which papers this book prepares you for
This book covers two question families that appear in bank recruitment examinations. The first is puzzles and seating arrangements in Reasoning Ability. The second is sentence arrangement and sentence rearrangement in English Language. The chapters are written for three exams in the 2026-27 cycle: IBPS PO (CRP PO/MT-XVI), SBI PO (advertisement CRPD/PO/2026-27/09) and IBPS Clerk, which the IBPS notice calls Customer Service Associate (CRP CSA-XVI). Other clerical or officer examinations may use similar puzzle formats, but their patterns are not covered here, so do not assume the figures in this chapter apply to them.
A bank reasoning paper is wider than puzzles. Coaching summaries of the IBPS Clerk reasoning syllabus list puzzles, seating arrangements, inequality, syllogism, coding-decoding, blood relations and direction sense. This book does not teach most of those topics. What it provides is depth in the puzzle families that take the most time in a 20-minute section, together with the English sentence questions that test cohesion and logical flow rather than grammar rules.
The book also does not cover quantitative aptitude, data interpretation, general awareness or the descriptive paper of the PO examination. A candidate who uses only these chapters will be prepared for the puzzle and sentence-arrangement questions, and must prepare the other sections from separate material. Chapter 1 is therefore the map: it shows where each family sits and how much time each one can reasonably take.
Prelims pattern across IBPS PO, SBI PO and IBPS Clerk
The prelims is an online objective test in which each section has its own clock. Table 1 shows what the notices and their secondary summaries report. The SBI PO figures come from Section 8 of the detailed advertisement for CRPD/PO/2026-27/09, which was read directly during the final review of this book. Some secondary guides show 35 reasoning questions; the advertisement shows 30. The IBPS figures are as reported by secondary summaries, because the official PDFs could not be retrieved during preparation (the server returned HTTP 503). Treat the IBPS rows as reported figures and check them against the notification for your cycle.
For IBPS PO, the question count is 35 for reasoning in every source reviewed, so the number of questions is the figure to plan around. The marks per section are less settled. Most sources give reasoning 35 marks and quantitative aptitude 35 marks, but one indexed copy of the notification gives reasoning 40 marks and quantitative aptitude 30 marks. Both versions total 100 marks. Because a question carrying 40 marks over 35 questions is worth more than one mark on average, the marks figure changes how much each reasoning question is worth and must be confirmed in the detailed notice.
For SBI PO, the detailed advertisement lists 40 English questions, 30 quantitative aptitude questions and 30 reasoning questions, each section timed at 20 minutes, with 100 marks in total. The advertisement gives no per-section marks. This chapter uses the 30-question reasoning figure, so reasoning is 30 questions in 20 minutes, which is an average of 40 seconds per question. The shortlist is drawn from aggregate marks, so a strong section can offset a weaker one at this stage.
For IBPS Clerk (CSA), the reported prelims pattern is 30 English questions, 35 reasoning questions and 35 numerical ability questions, each with a 20-minute timer, for a total of 100 questions and 100 marks in 60 minutes. Reasoning at 35 questions in 20 minutes gives an average of 34.3 seconds per question, which is the same average as IBPS PO. That average matters more than the marks, because a puzzle set takes far longer than a single question.
| Exam | Section | Questions | Marks (as reported) | Duration | Source and hedge |
|---|---|---|---|---|---|
| IBPS PO prelims | English Language | 30 | 30 | 20 min | Secondary summaries; notice not re-read |
| IBPS PO prelims | Reasoning Ability | 35 | 35 (one copy says 40) | 20 min | Question count agreed; marks conflict. Verify |
| IBPS PO prelims | Quantitative Aptitude | 35 | 35 (one copy says 30) | 20 min | As above. Verify |
| IBPS PO prelims | Total | 100 | 100 | 60 min | One-quarter mark penalty per wrong answer |
| SBI PO prelims | English Language | 40 | not listed per section (1 mark per question implied) | 20 min | Detailed advertisement CRPD/PO/2026-27/09, Section 8 |
| SBI PO prelims | Quantitative Aptitude | 30 | not listed per section (1 mark per question implied) | 20 min | Detailed advertisement CRPD/PO/2026-27/09, Section 8 |
| SBI PO prelims | Reasoning Ability | 30 | not listed per section (1 mark per question implied) | 20 min | Detailed advertisement CRPD/PO/2026-27/09, Section 8 (some guides show 35) |
| SBI PO prelims | Total | 100 | 100 | 1 hour | No sectional cut-off in prelims |
| IBPS Clerk prelims | English Language | 30 | 30 | 20 min | Secondary summaries; handout not re-read |
| IBPS Clerk prelims | Reasoning Ability | 35 | 35 | 20 min | Consistent across guides; verify |
| IBPS Clerk prelims | Numerical Ability | 35 | 35 | 20 min | As above |
| IBPS Clerk prelims | Total | 100 | 100 | 60 min | One-quarter mark penalty per wrong answer |
Mains objective reasoning and computer aptitude
The main examination is where puzzle questions carry the most weight for PO candidates, because the preliminary marks are not carried forward. The detailed SBI advertisement CRPD/PO/2026-27/09 (Section 8, read directly during the final review) sets the main examination as an online objective test of four timed sections with 170 questions and 200 marks in 3 hours, followed by a descriptive test of 30 marks, for a grand total of 230 marks. Test I is Reasoning and Computer Aptitude: 40 questions, 60 marks and 50 minutes. Secondary summaries of the IBPS PO notice also report 40 questions and 60 marks for this section, but they disagree on the duration. Treat the IBPS figures as reported, and confirm them against the notice for your cycle.
For IBPS PO, the question count is 40 with 60 marks in most summaries. The duration is 45 minutes in the most recent summaries and 50 minutes in others; one older page gives 45 questions and 60 minutes. The official detailed notification could not be read while this chapter was prepared, so none of these is confirmed. Until the notice is checked, plan for 45 and 50 minutes. Solved example 6 uses the two durations as illustrative arithmetic on the same 40 questions, not as the exam pattern. A 45-minute section gives 67.5 seconds per question, against 75 seconds for the 50-minute version.
Two rules govern the mains and are easy to confuse with the prelims. First, there is a sectional cut-off: each candidate must reach a minimum score in each test individually, and the bank decides those cut-offs for each section. A high score in reasoning cannot compensate for a low score in English. Second, the preliminary marks are not added to the final merit list. The SBI notice states this directly, and the preliminary marks serve only to shortlist candidates for the main examination.
The SBI notice applies the penalty for wrong answers to the objective tests in both the preliminary and the main examinations. The descriptive test is not an objective test, and this book does not cover it. Practise the mains reasoning section under the same penalty as the prelims, and record your attempts, because a set that you attempt in full is not necessarily the best use of the section time if its accuracy is low.
Negative marking and the arithmetic of guessing
The SBI notice defines the penalty precisely. For each question answered wrongly, one quarter of the marks assigned to that question is deducted, and a question left blank carries no penalty. For a one-mark question, that is 0.25 marks per wrong answer. The IBPS PO and IBPS Clerk preliminary notices and summaries report the same rule, with no penalty for unattempted questions. The net score is therefore the number of correct answers, minus one quarter of the number of wrong answers, with blanks counted as zero. Blank answers are free, which is a fact about this scheme and not an invitation to leave questions untouched.
Consider a question with four options, exactly one correct, answered by a random guess. The chance of a correct answer is one in four and the chance of a wrong answer is three in four. The expected mark is (1/4 x 1) + (3/4 x -0.25) = 0.25 - 0.1875 = +0.0625. A blind guess is therefore worth about six hundredths of a mark on average, not zero. It is a common belief that random guessing is exactly neutral under this penalty, but that is true only when the penalty equals one third of a mark, which is the break-even value for four options.
The general break-even penalty for a random guess is 1/(n - 1), where n is the number of options. For four options it is one third; for five options it is one quarter. The penalty used in these exams is one quarter, so a blind guess on a four-option question is slightly positive, and a guess on a five-option question is exactly neutral. The real gain comes from elimination. With three options left, a guess is worth (1/3 x 1) - (2/3 x 0.25) = +0.1667 marks. With two options left, it is (1/2 x 1) - (1/2 x 0.25) = +0.375 marks, which is six times the value of a blind guess.
A blind guess is also noisy. For one question, the standard deviation of the mark is about 0.54, so a section of 30 questions answered entirely at random has an expected gain of about 1.9 marks but a spread of nearly 3 marks either way. The lesson is that random guessing across a whole section is a weak strategy: it adds little on average and can move the score by several marks. Guess only when elimination has removed at least two options, and only when the time left would otherwise be wasted.
