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Previous Year Questions
Tale of Aladdin
In the past, credit for telling the tale of Aladdin has often gone to Antoine Galland . . . the first European translator of . . . Arabian Nights [which] started as a series of translations of an incomplete manuscript of a medieval Arabic story collection. . . But, though those tales were of medieval origin, Aladdin may be a more recent invention. Scholars have not found a manuscript of the story that predates the version published in 1712 by Galland, who wrote in his diary that he first heard the tale from a Syrian storyteller from Aleppo named Hanna Diyab . . .
Despite the fantastical elements of the story, scholars now think the main character may actually be based on a real person’s real experiences. . . . Though Galland never credited Diyab in his published translations of the Arabian Nights stories, Diyab wrote something of his own: a travelogue penned in the mid-18th century. In it, he recalls telling Galland the story of Aladdin [and] describes his own hard-knocks upbringing and the way he marveled at the extravagance of Versailles. The descriptions he uses were very similar to the descriptions of the lavish palace that ended up in Galland’s version of the Aladdin story. [Therefore, author Paulo Lemos] Horta believes that “Aladdin might be the young Arab Maronite from Aleppo, marveling at the jewels and riches of Versailles.” . . .
For 300 years, scholars thought that the rags-to-riches story of Aladdin might have been inspired by the plots of French fairy tales that came out around the same time, or that the story was invented in that 18th century period as a byproduct of French Orientalism, a fascination with stereotypical exotic Middle Eastern luxuries that was prevalent then. The idea that Diyab might have based it on his own life — the experiences of a Middle Eastern man encountering the French, not vice-versa — flips the script. [According to Horta,] “Diyab was ideally placed to embody the overlapping world of East and West, blending the storytelling traditions of his homeland with his youthful observations of the wonder of 18th-century France.” . . .
To the scholars who study the tale, its narrative drama isn’t the only reason storytellers keep finding reason to return to Aladdin. It reflects not only “a history of the French and the Middle East, but also [a story about] Middle Easterners coming to Paris and that speaks to our world today,” as Horta puts it. “The day Diyab told the story of Aladdin to Galland, there were riots due to food shortages during the winter and spring of 1708 to 1709, and Diyab was sensitive to those people in a way that Galland is not. When you read this diary, you see this solidarity among the Arabs who were in Paris at the time. . . . There is little in the writings of Galland that would suggest that he was capable of developing a character like Aladdin with sympathy, but Diyab’s memoir reveals a narrator adept at capturing the distinctive psychology of a young protagonist, as well as recognizing the kinds of injustices and opportunities that can transform the path of any youthful adventurer.”
The author of the passage is most likely to agree with which of the following explanations for the origins of the story of Aladdin?
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Which of the following, if true, would invalidate the inversion that the phrase “flips the script” refers to?
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Which of the following is the primary reason for why storytellers are still fascinated by the story of Aladdin?
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Which of the following does not contribute to the passage’s claim about the authorship of Aladdin?
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Choice Fatigue
Contemporary internet shopping conjures a perfect storm of choice anxiety. Research has consistently held that people who are presented with a few options make better, easier decisions than those presented with many. . . . Helping consumers figure out what to buy amid an endless sea of choice online has become a cottage industry unto itself. Many brands and retailers now wield marketing buzzwords such as curation, differentiation, and discovery as they attempt to sell an assortment of stuff targeted to their ideal customer. Companies find such shoppers through the data gold mine of digital advertising, which can catalog people by gender, income level, personal interests, and more. Since Americans have lost the ability to sort through the sheer volume of the consumer choices available to them, a ghost now has to be in the retail machine, whether it’s an algorithm, an influencer, or some snazzy ad tech to help a product follow you around the internet. Indeed, choice fatigue is one reason so many people gravitate toward lifestyle influencers on Instagram—the relentlessly chic young moms and perpetually vacationing 20-somethings—who present an aspirational worldview, and then recommend the products and services that help achieve it. . . .
For a relatively new class of consumer-products start-ups, there’s another method entirely. Instead of making sense of a sea of existing stuff, these companies claim to disrupt stuff as Americans know it. Casper (mattresses), Glossier (makeup), Away (suitcases), and many others have sprouted up to offer consumers freedom from choice: The companies have a few aesthetically pleasing and supposedly highly functional options, usually at mid-range prices. They’re selling nice things, but maybe more importantly, they’re selling a confidence in those things, and an ability to opt out of the stuff rat race. . . .
One-thousand-dollar mattresses and $300 suitcases might solve choice anxiety for a certain tier of consumer, but the companies that sell them, along with those that attempt to massage the larger stuff economy into something navigable, are still just working within a consumer market that’s broken in systemic ways. The presence of so much stuff in America might be more valuable if it were more evenly distributed, but stuff’s creators tend to focus their energy on those who already have plenty. As options have expanded for people with disposable income, the opportunity to buy even basic things such as fresh food or quality diapers has contracted for much of America’s lower classes.
For start-ups that promise accessible simplicity, their very structure still might eventually push them toward overwhelming variety. Most of these companies are based on hundreds of millions of dollars of venture capital, the investors of which tend to expect a steep growth rate that can’t be achieved by selling one great mattress or one great sneaker. Casper has expanded into bedroom furniture and bed linens. Glossier, after years of marketing itself as no-makeup makeup that requires little skill to apply, recently launched a full line of glittering color cosmetics. There may be no way to opt out of stuff by buying into the right thing.
Which of the following hypothetical statements would add the least depth to the author’s prediction of the fate of start-ups offering few product options?
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Which one of the following best sums up the overall purpose of the examples of Casper and Glossier in the passage?
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A new food brand plans to launch a series of products in the American market. Which of the following product plans is most likely to be supported by the author of the passage?
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All of the following, IF TRUE, would weaken the author’s claims EXCEPT:
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Based on the passage, all of the following can be inferred about consumer behaviour EXCEPT that:
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Emperor Penguins
Scientists recently discovered that Emperor Penguins—one of Antarctica’s most celebrated species—employ a particularly unusual technique for surviving the daily chill. As detailed in an article published today in the journal Biology Letters, the birds minimize heat loss by keeping the outer surface of their plumage below the temperature of the surrounding air. At the same time, the penguins’ thick plumage insulates their body and keeps it toasty. . . .
The researchers analyzed thermographic images . . . taken over roughly a month during June 2008. During that period, the average air temperature was 0.32 degrees Fahrenheit. At the same time, the majority of the plumage covering the penguins’ bodies was even colder: the surface of their warmest body part, their feet, was an average 1.76 degrees Fahrenheit, but the plumage on their heads, chests and backs were -1.84, -7.24 and -9.76 degrees Fahrenheit respectively. Overall, nearly the entire outer surface of the penguins’ bodies was below freezing at all times, except for their eyes and beaks. The scientists also used a computer simulation to determine how much heat was lost or gained from each part of the body—and discovered that by keeping their outer surface below air temperature, the birds might paradoxically be able to draw very slight amounts of heat from the air around them. The key to their trick is the difference between two different types of heat transfer: radiation and convection.
The penguins do lose internal body heat to the surrounding air through thermal radiation, just as our bodies do on a cold day. Because their bodies (but not surface plumage) are warmer than the surrounding air, heat gradually radiates outward over time, moving from a warmer material to a colder one. To maintain body temperature while losing heat, penguins, like all warm-blooded animals, rely on the metabolism of food. The penguins, though, have an additional strategy. Since their outer plumage is even colder than the air, the simulation showed that they might gain back a little of this heat through thermal convection—the transfer of heat via the movement of a fluid (in this case, the air). As the cold Antarctic air cycles around their bodies, slightly warmer air comes into contact with the plumage and donates minute amounts of heat back to the penguins, then cycles away at a slightly colder temperature.
Most of this heat, the researchers note, probably doesn’t make it all the way through the plumage and back to the penguins’ bodies, but it could make a slight difference. At the very least, the method by which a penguin’s plumage wicks heat from the bitterly cold air that surrounds it helps to cancel out some of the heat that’s radiating from its interior. And given the Emperors’ unusually demanding breeding cycle, every bit of warmth counts. . . . Since [penguins trek as far as 75 miles to the coast to breed and male penguins] don’t eat anything during [the incubation period of 64 days], conserving calories by giving up as little heat as possible is absolutely crucial.
In the last sentence of paragraph 3, “slightly warmer air” and “at a slightly colder temperature” refer to ______ AND ______ respectively:
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Which of the following best explains the purpose of the word “paradoxically” as used by the author?
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All of the following, if true, would negate the findings of the study reported in the passage EXCEPT:
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Which of the following can be responsible for Emperor Penguins losing body heat?
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Folk Music
"Free of the taint of manufacture" – that phrase, in particular, is heavily loaded with the ideology of what the Victorian socialist William Morris called the "anti-scrape", or an anti- capitalist conservationism (not conservatism) that solaced itself with the vision of a pre- industrial golden age. In Britain, folk may often appear a cosy, fossilised form, but when you look more closely, the idea of folk – who has the right to sing it, dance it, invoke it, collect it, belong to it or appropriate it for political or cultural ends – has always been contested territory. . . .
In our own time, though, the word "folk" . . . has achieved the rare distinction of occupying fashionable and unfashionable status simultaneously. Just as the effusive floral prints of the radical William Morris now cover genteel sofas, so the revolutionary intentions of many folk historians and revivalists have led to music that is commonly regarded as parochial and conservative. And yet – as newspaper columns periodically rejoice – folk is hip again, influencing artists, clothing and furniture designers, celebrated at music festivals, awards ceremonies and on TV, reissued on countless record labels. Folk is a sonic "shabby chic", containing elements of the uncanny and eerie, as well as an antique veneer, a whiff of Britain's heathen dark ages. The very obscurity and anonymity of folk music's origins open up space for rampant imaginative fancies. . . .
[Cecil Sharp, who wrote about this subject, believed that] folk songs existed in constant transformation, a living example of an art form in a perpetual state of renewal. "One man sings a song, and then others sing it after him, changing what they do not like" is the most concise summary of his conclusions on its origins. He compared each rendition of a ballad to an acorn falling from an oak tree; every subsequent iteration sows the song anew. But there is tension in newness. In the late 1960s, purists were suspicious of folk songs recast in rock idioms. Electrification, however, comes in many forms. For the early-20th-century composers such as Vaughan Williams and Holst, there were thunderbolts of inspiration from oriental mysticism, angular modernism and the body blow of the first world war, as well as input from the rediscovered folk tradition itself.
For the second wave of folk revivalists, such as Ewan MacColl and AL Lloyd, starting in the 40s, the vital spark was communism's dream of a post-revolutionary New Jerusalem. For their younger successors in the 60s, who thronged the folk clubs set up by the old guard, the lyrical freedom of Dylan and the unchained melodies of psychedelia created the conditions for folk- rock's own golden age, a brief Indian summer that lasted from about 1969 to 1971. . . . Four decades on, even that progressive period has become just one more era ripe for fashionable emulation and pastiche. The idea of a folk tradition being exclusively confined to oral transmission has become a much looser, less severely guarded concept. Recorded music and television, for today's metropolitan generation, are where the equivalent of folk memories are seeded. . . .
The author says that folk “may often appear a cosy, fossilised form” because:
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All of the following are causes for plurality and diversity within the British folk tradition EXCEPT:
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At a conference on folk forms, the author of the passage is least likely to agree with which one of the following views?
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The primary purpose of the reference to William Morris and his floral prints is to show:
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Topophilia
As defined by the geographer Yi-Fu Tuan, topophilia is the affective bond between people and place. His 1974 book set forth a wide-ranging exploration of how the emotive ties with the material environment vary greatly from person to person and in intensity, subtlety, and mode of expression. Factors influencing one’s depth of response to the environment include cultural background, gender, race, and historical circumstance, and Tuan also argued that there is a biological and sensory element. Topophilia might not be the strongest of human emotions— indeed, many people feel utterly indifferent toward the environments that shape their lives— but when activated it has the power to elevate a place to become the carrier of emotionally charged events or to be perceived as a symbol.
Aesthetic appreciation is one way in which people respond to the environment. A brilliantly colored rainbow after gloomy afternoon showers, a busy city street alive with human interaction—one might experience the beauty of such landscapes that had seemed quite ordinary only moments before or that are being newly discovered. This is quite the opposite of a second topophilic bond, namely that of the acquired taste for certain landscapes and places that one knows well. When a place is home, or when a space has become the locus of memories or the means of gaining a livelihood, it frequently evokes a deeper set of attachments than those predicated purely on the visual. A third response to the environment also depends on the human senses but may be tactile and olfactory, namely a delight in the feel and smell of air, water, and the earth.
Topophilia—and its very close conceptual twin, sense of place—is an experience that, however elusive, has inspired recent architects and planners. Most notably, new urbanism seeks to counter the perceived placelessness of modern suburbs and the decline of central cities through neo-traditional design motifs. Although motivated by good intentions, such attempts to create places rich in meaning are perhaps bound to disappoint. As Tuan noted, purely aesthetic responses often are suddenly revealed, but their intensity rarely is long- lasting. Topophilia is difficult to design for and impossible to quantify, and its most articulate interpreters have been self-reflective philosophers such as Henry David Thoreau, evoking a marvelously intricate sense of place at Walden Pond, and Tuan, describing his deep affinity for the desert.
Topophilia connotes a positive relationship, but it often is useful to explore the darker affiliations between people and place. Patriotism, literally meaning the love of one’s terra patria or homeland, has long been cultivated by governing elites for a range of nationalist projects, including war preparation and ethnic cleansing. Residents of upscale residential developments have disclosed how important it is to maintain their community’s distinct identity, often by casting themselves in a superior social position and by reinforcing class and racial differences. And just as a beloved landscape is suddenly revealed, so too may landscapes of fear cast a dark shadow over a place that makes one feel a sense of dread or anxiety—or topophobia.
In the last paragraph, the author uses the example of “Residents of upscale residential developments” to illustrate the:
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Which one of the following best captures the meaning of the statement, “Topophilia is difficult to design for and impossible to quantify . . .”?
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Which one of the following comes closest in meaning to the author’s understanding of topophilia?
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Which of the following statements, if true, could be seen as not contradicting the arguments in the passage?
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The passage given below is followed by four alternate summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.
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. Choose its number as your answer and key it in.
A club has 256 members of whom 144 can play football, 123 can play tennis, and 132 can play cricket. Moreover, 58 members can play both football and tennis, 25 can play both cricket and tennis, while 63 can play both football and cricket. If every member can play at least one game, then the number of members who can play only tennis is
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Meena scores 40% in an examination and after review, even though her score is increased by 50%, she fails by 35 marks. If her post-review score is increased by 20%, she will have 7 marks more than the passing score. The percentage score needed for passing the examination is
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Corners are cut off from an equilateral triangle T to produce a regular hexagon H. Then, the ratio of the area of H to the area of T is
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The product of two positive numbers is 616. If the ratio of the difference of their cubes to the cube of their difference is 157 : 3, then the sum of the two numbers is
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On selling a pen at 5% loss and a book at 15% gain, Karim gains Rs. 7. If he sells the pen at 5% gain and the book at 10% gain, he gains Rs. 13. What is the cost price of the book in Rupees?
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At their usual efficiency levels, A and B together finish a task in 12 days. If A had worked half as efficiently as she usually does, and B had worked thrice as efficiently as he usually does, the task would have been completed in 9 days. How many days would A take to finish the task if she works alone at her usual efficiency?
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Two cars travel the same distance starting at 10:00 am and 11:00 am, respectively, on the same day. They reach their common destination at the same point of time. If the first car travelled for at least 6 hours, then the highest possible value of the percentage by which the speed of the second car could exceed that of the first car is
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If a1 + a2 + a3 + . + an = 3(2n+1 - 2), then a11 equals
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The number of the real roots of the equation 2cos(x(x + 1)) = 2x + 2-x is
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One can use three different transports which move at 10, 20, and 30 kmph, respectively. To reach from A to B, Amal took each mode of transport 1/3 of his total journey time, while Bimal took each mode of transport 1/3 of the total distance. The percentage by which Bimal's travel time exceeds Amal's travel time is nearest to
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Amala, Bina, and Gouri invest money in the ratio 3 : 4 : 5 in fixed deposits having respective annual interest rates in the ratio 6 : 5 : 4. What is their total interest income (in Rs) after a year, if Bina's interest income exceeds Amala's by Rs 250?
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Let x and y be positive real numbers such that log5(x + y) + log5(x - y) = 3, and log2y - log2x = 1 - log23. Then xy equals
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The number of solutions of the equation |x|(6x2 + 1) = 5x2 is
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The product of the distinct roots of |x2 - x - 6| = x + 2 is
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The wheels of bicycles A and B have radii 30 cm and 40 cm, respectively. While traveling a certain distance, each wheel of A required 5000 more revolutions than each wheel of B. If bicycle B traveled this distance in 45 minutes, then its speed, in km per hour, was
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Ramesh and Gautam are among 22 students who write an examination. Ramesh scores 82.5. The average score of the 21 students other than Gautam is 62. The average score of all the 22 students is one more than the average score of the 21 students other than Ramesh. The score of Gautam is
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A new game show on TV has 100 boxes numbered 1, 2, ....., 100 in a row, each containing a mystery prize. The prizes are items of different types, a, b, c, ....., in decreasing order of value. The most expensive item is of type a, a diamond ring, and there is exactly one of these. You are told that the number of items at least doubles as you move to the next type. For example, there would be at least twice as many items of type b as of type a, at least twice as many items of type c as of type b and so on. There is no particular order in which the prizes are placed in the boxes
What is the minimum possible number of different types of prizes? ?
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What is the maximum possible number of different types of prizes?
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You ask for the type of item in box 45. Instead of being given a direct answer, you are told that there are 31 items of the same type as box 45 in boxes 1 to 44 and 43 items of the same type as box 45 in boxes 46 to 100. What is the maximum possible number of different types of items?
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What is the minimum number of street segments that X must cross to reach Y?
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Should a new person stand at intersection d, who among the six would she see?
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What is the rank of Kerala in the ‘IPC crimes’ category?
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Which of the following is DEFINITELY true about the ranks of states/UT in the ‘other crimes’ category?
i) Tamil Nadu: 2
ii) Puducherry: 3
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In the two states where the highest total number of cases are registered, the ratio of the total number of cases in IPC crimes to the total number in SLL crimes is closest to Ans :
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What is the sum of the ranks of Delhi in the three categories of crimes?
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Five vendors are being considered for a service. The evaluation committee evaluated each vendor on six aspects – Cost, Customer Service, Features, Quality, Reach, and Reliability. Each of these evaluations are on a scale of 0 (worst) to 100 (perfect). The evaluation scores on these aspects are shown in the radar chart. For example, Vendor 1 obtains a score of 52 on Reliability, Vendor 2 obtains a score of 45 on Features and Vendor 3 obtains a score of 90 on Cost
On which aspect is the median score of the five vendors the least?
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A vendor's final score is the average of their scores on all six aspects. Which vendor has the highest final score?
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List of all the vendors who are among the top two scorers on the maximum number of aspects is:
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List of all the vendors who are among the top three vendors on all six aspects is:
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A supermarket has to place 12 items (coded A to L) in shelves numbered 1 to 16. Five of these items are types of biscuits, three are types of candies and the rest are types of savouries. Only one item can be kept in a shelf. Items are to be placed such that all items of same type are clustered together with no empty shelf between items of the same type and at least one empty shelf between two different types of items. At most two empty shelves can have consecutive numbers.
The following additional facts are known.
1. A and B are to be placed in consecutively numbered shelves in increasing order.
2. I and J are to be placed in consecutively numbered shelves both higher numbered than the shelves in which A and B are kept.
3. D, E and F are savouries and are to be placed in consecutively numbered shelves in increasing order after all the biscuits and candies.
4. K is to be placed in shelf number 16.
5. L and J are items of the same type, while H is an item of a different type.
6. C is a candy and is to be placed in a shelf preceded by two empty shelves.
7. L is to be placed in a shelf preceded by exactly one empty shelf.
In how many different ways can the items be arranged on the shelves?
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Which of the following items is not a type of biscuit?
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Which of the following can represent the numbers of the empty shelves in a possible arrangement?
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Which of the following statements is necessarily true?
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