Analogy, in reasoning terms, is the art of identifying relationships. You are shown a pair of words, numbers, or letters that share a specific connection, and then you must find a second pair that shares the exact same type of connection.
Think of it this way — if someone says "Doctor is to Stethoscope as Carpenter is to ___?", they're not asking about doctors at all. They're asking about the relationship pattern: professional → signature tool. The answer is Saw (or Hammer), because that's the carpenter's signature tool.
The same logic scales across three domains you will encounter in the Bihar Police Constable exam:
Here is what catches students off guard: the question is never asking "what word is related to the second given word?" It is always asking "what relationship connects the first pair, and which option replicates that exact relationship?" That distinction is the entire skill.
A practical analogy (meta, but useful): suppose you are a police officer trained in pattern recognition. You see a suspect's face and match it to a profile — not by comparing random features but by comparing the same set of features systematically. Analogy questions work identically: lock in the relationship type first, then scan the options.
In the Bihar Police Constable paper, analogy questions are typically straightforward — one or two conceptual layers at most. Speed matters, so your instinct to "feel" the relationship needs to become a structured, named process. That is what this chapter trains.
Word analogy questions are the most common. Before you look at the options, name the relationship out loud (or mentally). This single habit eliminates wrong answers automatically.
Core relationship types to memorize:
| Relationship Type | Example | |---|---| | Antonym pair | Novelty : Oldness | | Synonym pair | Begin : Commence | | Part-to-Whole | Page : Book | | Whole-to-Part | Book : Chapter | | Tool-to-User | Stethoscope : Doctor | | Product-to-Source | Wool : Sheep | | Worker-to-Workplace | Judge : Court | | Word-to-Degree | Warm : Hot | | Cause-to-Effect | Practice : Perfection | | Country-to-Legislature | Great Britain : Parliament | | Country-to-Capital | India : New Delhi | | Animal-to-Habitat | Fish : Water | | Young one | Cow : Calf |
When you see the pair Parliament : Great Britain, the relationship is legislature : country. Immediately flip it — Congress (a legislature) should match to its country. That is USA. Do not waste time checking Japan or Netherlands; the moment you define the relationship type, only one answer fits.
Look at the pair and ask: what operation converts the first number into the second?
Common operations: addition, subtraction, multiplication, division, squaring, cubing, adding/subtracting digits, reversing digits.
Example: 16 : 4 :: 81 : ?
√16 = 4, so apply the same → √81 = 9. Answer: 9.Example: 3 : 12 :: 5 : ?
3 × 4 = 12, so 5 × 4 = 20. Or think: 3² + 3 = 12, so 5² + 5 = 30. Check both — only one will appear in options.Always verify by testing your identified rule on the given pair before applying it to the unknown pair. If the rule fails the first pair, you have the wrong rule.
Letter analogy questions involve positional values (A=1, B=2, ... Z=26) or pattern shifts.
Step 1: Assign numeric positions to each letter. Step 2: Find what operation (forward shift, backward shift, reversal, skip-step) converts the first letter group to the second. Step 3: Apply identically to the third group.
Example: ACE : BDF :: GIK : ?
Example: AB : ZY :: CD : ?
The mirror-position rule (letter + its mirror = 27) is extremely common. Learn it: A↔Z, B↔Y, C↔X, D↔W, E↔V, F↔U, G↔T, H↔S, I↔R, J↔Q, K↔P, L↔O, M↔N.
Examiners typically include these types of wrong options:
The fix: always define the relationship before reading the options. Once you have your definition, wrong options become obvious.
Before glancing at the options, complete this sentence in your head: "The first word is the ___ of the second word." If you cannot complete that sentence cleanly in two seconds, flip it: "The second word is the ___ of the first word." This forces you to commit to a relationship label. Students who skip this step get distracted by plausible-looking options. With this habit: average time to eliminate 2 wrong options drops from ~25s to ~8s, because you are matching relationship labels, not re-reading words.
The mirror position of any letter = 27 minus its position number. A=1, mirror=26(Z). B=2, mirror=25(Y). M=13, mirror=14(N). Memorize just the midpoint pair M↔N, and you can calculate any mirror in under 3 seconds by counting from M/N outward. Without this: students manually count backwards from Z for each letter (~15s per letter). With this: any mirror pair solved in under 3s.
When a number pair looks like (large number : small number), immediately test √large = small. When it looks like (small : large), test small² = large or small³ = large. These three operations (square, square root, cube) cover roughly 40% of all number analogy pairs in government exams. Test them in exactly this order before trying multiplication tables. Standard trial-and-error on a 3-digit number: ~40s. This prioritized 3-step test: ~10s.
Keep a mental lookup table for three high-frequency word analogy sub-types: (1) Country → Legislature, (2) Country → Capital, (3) Country → Currency. For the Bihar Police Constable level, you need roughly 10 entries each. Key ones: India→Parliament/Lok Sabha, USA→Congress, UK→Parliament/House of Commons, Japan→Diet, France→National Assembly, Russia→Duma. When the question gives you a legislature name, cross-match to the right country in under 5s — no reasoning needed, pure recall. Without this list students guess; with it, these questions become free marks (~5s each).
For word analogy pairs, first check: are the two words opposites (antonyms) or near-same-meaning (synonyms)? If yes, your answer must also be an antonym or synonym of the third given word — respectively. This eliminates all cause-effect, part-whole, and tool-user options instantly. Novelty:Oldness — these are antonyms. So Newness:? needs an antonym of Newness. That is Antiquity. You eliminate Model, Culture, Discovery without checking their meanings. Time: 6s vs 20s for option-by-option analysis.
When you see an analogy question in the exam hall, run this decision tree:
Step 1 — Identify the domain. Is it word pairs, number pairs, or letter pairs? This takes 1 second.
Step 2 — Name the relationship.
Step 3 — Verify on the given pair. Does your identified relationship correctly produce the second item from the first? If yes, proceed. If not, try the next rule.
Step 4 — Apply to unknown. Use the exact same rule to generate the expected answer, then find it in the options.
Step 5 — Sanity-check. Read your chosen option back: "First item is the ___ of second item — same as third item is the ___ of my answer." If both blanks match, you are done.
Target time per analogy question: under 30 seconds. If you have spent 30 seconds and are still unsure, mark your best guess, flag it, and move on.
Why this question: This is a classic country-legislature analogy. It tests whether you know that different countries use different names for their parliament-equivalent body — a factual pair disguised as reasoning.
Solving path: Name the relationship first — Parliament is the legislature (law-making body) of Great Britain. So you need: Congress is the legislature of which country? Congress is the United States legislature. Answer: USA. Japan's legislature is the Diet, Netherlands' is the States-General, India's is Parliament. Those three options fail the relationship test immediately.
Why this question: This is an antonym-pair analogy. The trap here is that "Novelty" and "Newness" appear related to each other, which distracts students into thinking the question is about synonyms of Novelty.
Solving path: Novelty : Oldness — are these synonyms or antonyms? Antonyms. So the rule is: second word is the antonym of the first word. Apply to Newness : ? → you need the antonym of Newness. Newness means being new or recent. Its antonym is Antiquity (something ancient, very old). Model, Culture, and Discovery are neither antonyms nor meaningfully opposite to Newness — they fail the antonym test. Answer: Antiquity.
Why this question: This question tests logical categorization in Hindi-medium analogy — a format that appears in older Bihar Police papers. It requires knowing the classification of logical relationships.
Solving path: The question asks which category असंगत (inconsistency/contradiction) belongs to. The correct answer per the official key is परसंपर्क (opposition/contrast relation). In logical reasoning classification, contradictions and inconsistencies fall under the opposition-type relationship (परसंपर्क), not व्यापक (broad/general) or पदावली (terminology). Answer: परसंपर्क.
Reading the question pair in only one direction. "Doctor : Hospital" and "Hospital : Doctor" are different relationships (worker-to-workplace vs. workplace-to-worker). If the options do not work, flip the pair before changing your relationship type.
Matching surface words instead of relationship types. If the pair is "Page : Book", students often choose an option that contains a word from the same topic (library, shelf) rather than one that replicates the part-to-whole relationship correctly.
Forcing a single rule on number analogy. If 15 : 225 makes you think "multiply by 15", remember that √225 = 15, so the relationship could be x → x². Test multiple rules before committing; only the given pair's verification step will tell you which one is correct.
Ignoring direction in letter analogy. A shift of +3 forward (ACE→DFH) is not the same as a shift of +3 backward (ACE→XZB). Confirm whether the shift is forward or backward on the given pair before applying it.
Falling for the "same category but wrong sub-type" trap. In country-based questions, Parliament : Great Britain → Congress : ? — "India" is tempting because India also has a Parliament. But the question asks for the country where Congress is the legislature, not another country that also has a Parliament-type body.
Skipping the verify step under time pressure. Especially in number analogy, students identify a plausible rule and immediately apply it without confirming it works on the given pair. This leads to errors on multi-step rules. Always spend 3 seconds confirming before applying.