PracticeRCFree daily drill · CAT Verbal Ability
CAT para jumbles practice, from real essays
A para jumble is a real paragraph with its sentences shuffled. CAT shows you four or five numbered sentences and asks you to type the correct order - a TITA question, so there are no options to eliminate and no negative marking. Aspirants attempt every one, and most say the same thing: they feel unpredictable, and there is not enough good material. This drill fixes the second problem. Every item is a paragraph from an Aeon essay, chosen by rules that guarantee the order can be recovered from cues, and every answer shows which cue does the work.
How CAT asks it
Four sentences (occasionally five) labelled 1 to 4 appear out of order. You type the sequence - 3142,
say - into a box. There is no partial credit and no penalty: +3 for the exact order, 0 otherwise. Two or three
of these appear in every VARC section alongside odd-sentence-out, para summary and para completion.
The method: find the opener, then follow the cues
A sentence that opens with a back-reference - This, These, Such, It, They - cannot be first: it points at something already said. A sentence that opens with However, But, Yet or Instead pushes back on the sentence before it. For example, In other words and Indeed unpack the previous claim; So, Thus and The result draw a conclusion from it. Strike out every sentence that leans on an earlier one and the opener is what remains. Then chain the rest by their cues, checking that each pair reads as one thought. Our review marks these cues on every item, so the method becomes reflex.
Try one
The four sentences of a paragraph are given below in a jumbled order. Type the correct sequence.
- 1. But faced with more humane, sustainable options, is disgust a good enough reason to reject them?
- 2. The idea of growing muscle tissue in labs for human consumption, independently of an animal body, seemed unnatural and repellent.
- 3. Is it any kind of reason at all?
- 4. It seemed, in a word, disgusting.
Show the answer
Answer: 2413
The paragraph in order:
- The idea of growing muscle tissue in labs for human consumption, independently of an animal body, seemed unnatural and repellent.
- It seemed, in a word, disgusting.
- But faced with more humane, sustainable options, is disgust a good enough reason to reject them?
- Is it any kind of reason at all?
How you get there: sentence 4 opens with It, a back-reference, so it cannot start; sentence 1 opens with But, pushing back on what came before; sentence 3 ("Is it any kind of reason at all?") sharpens the question just asked. Only sentence 2 introduces its subject without leaning on an earlier sentence.
Source: Adjust your disgust, Aeon.
Why this practice is free and unlimited
The items are built once, by rules, from essays we already curate for Reading Comprehension. Serving one costs nothing, so there is no cap, no credit and no account: open today's set and play. The same eight items go to everyone on a given day, so you can send a friend your score and they will face exactly what you faced. Signed-in members also get a 30-day history.
Today's set: 6 para jumbles + 2 odd-one-out in 12 minutes
Then practise the other two-thirds of VARC - Reading Comprehension - with a generated test from any article.
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