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CAT 2017 Slot 1 — VARC Question 34

Mixed PracticeEasy

Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and coherent short paragraph. Identify the odd one out.

  1. The water that made up ancient lakes and perhaps an ocean was lost.
  2. Particles from the Sun collided with molecules in the atmosphere, knocking them into space or giving them an electric charge that caused them to be swept away by the solar wind.
  3. Most of the planet’s remaining water is now frozen or buried, but clues over the past decade suggested that some liquid water, a presumed necessity for life, might survive in underground aquifers.
  4. Data from NASA’s MAVEN orbiter show that solar storms stripped away most of Mars’s once–thick atmosphere.
  5. A recent study reveals how Mars lost much of its early water, while another indicates that some liquid water remains.

Answer & solution

Correct answer: 1

Answer: 1

Solution

Easy

Odd-sentence-out: identify the four sentences that form one coherent paragraph, then the leftover. The theme is how Mars lost most of its water yet may retain some liquid water. Sentence 5 frames both halves of that story; the misfit is the one whose information is already covered and too vague to add anything.

1

Establish the core thread. Sentence 5 is the natural opener — "A recent study reveals how Mars lost much of its early water, while another indicates that some liquid water remains." Sentence 4 then explains the loss ("solar storms stripped away most of Mars's once-thick atmosphere"), sentence 2 gives the detail of that stripping (particles from the Sun swept molecules into space), and sentence 3 covers the surviving water ("some liquid water… might survive in underground aquifers"). So 5–4–2–3 is a complete, coherent paragraph.

2

Isolate the misfit: 1. Sentence 1 — "The water that made up ancient lakes and perhaps an ocean was lost" — is a vague, standalone statement. The fact that water was lost is already handled by 5, 4 and 2, and "ancient lakes and perhaps an ocean" introduces nothing the chain needs. With no link binding it in, it is the odd one out.

The odd sentence is 1 (vague and redundant; the four-sentence paragraph is 5–4–2–3). Key in 1.

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CAT 2017 Slot 1 VARC Q34: Five sentences related to a topic are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a meaningful and c — Solution | TheCATExam