Analytical Reasoning & Intelligence Tests — Chapter 5

Blood Relations

Why this chapter matters: Blood relations is the smallest family in Subject 12 and the most trap-dense per item: the whole bank for it is 9 topic-tagged stems across 9 distinct source files, and every one of them turns on a single word — son versus child, aunt versus sister, “my father’s son” versus “my brother”. There is no new type hiding outside those stems: the same three moves solve all of them, and the single most-asked stem in the family (the “father of B but B is not his son” item) appears six times across the banks once the untagged copies are counted (Section 6). Learn the three moves, work all thirteen stems in this chapter, and no blood-relation item the papers set can surprise you — because the papers have not set a new one since 2020.

Status of this chapter (read first): this is AR-05, written 31 October 2026 in taxonomy order after AR-04. The Subject 12 structure page claimed no mark for this family at structure level because its paper-level spread had not been verified file by file; that verification is done in this run (Section 10), and the marks in the Exam Trend box below rest on it — not on the structure page’s counts alone. One extension to the structure page is recorded here, not hidden: its “9 unique stems, 9 files” figure is the topic-tagged bank. A text scan in this run found four more genuine blood-relation stems whose topics do not carry the blood-relation tag (Section 6) — two more wordings of the anchor stem, the Seema photograph stem, and a CSS MPT 2026 practice-set stem. They are worked in full, labelled as untagged, and kept out of the headline bankCount so the script count stays reproducible; the family total with them is 13 stems across 13 distinct source files. The marks below do not depend on them: the tagged 9 files already clear the 🔁 paper-count limb on their own.

Exam Trend box

• 🔁 Most Repeated: Blood relations as a family — 9 topic-tagged stems across 9 distinct source files, clearing the 🔁 paper-count limb (≥5 different papers): FPSC papers of 2001 (×2), 2008, 2010 and 2015, and PPSC papers of 2020 (×4). The single most-repeated stem is the anchor item — “A is the father of B but B is not A’s son” — in four tagged wordings (FPSC 2001; PPSC 2020 ×3) and two further untagged wordings (Section 6), six in all.
• ⭐ Must Know: none claimed. The family’s latest exam-paper appearance is PPSC 2020. Its only 2024–2026 signal is a single CSS MPT 2026 practice-set stem (Section 6.3), not a 2024–2026 exam paper — the same standard applied in AR-04. Blood relations is therefore taught as a high-frequency, always-available family, not as a must-know 2024–2026 item.
• 🆕 Newly Appeared / Recent Trend: none claimed. Blood-relation items run continuously from FPSC 2001 to PPSC 2020, and the 2026 practice-set stem is the same old “my father’s son” type, not a new type. Nothing in the bank is a first appearance of 2025–26.

1. The method — four steps, in order

1. Fix the speaker first. Every stem has a speaker (“I”, “the lady”, “a man pointing”). All relations are measured from that person. If you lose the speaker, you lose the item.
2. Replace each phrase with the person it names, from the far end backwards. “My father’s son” is not a riddle to stare at — it is a person: work out who “my father’s son” is before you touch the rest of the sentence. “The sister of the son of this man” likewise: the son’s sister is the man’s daughter, full stop.
3. Sex matters only where the stem says so. “Son”, “daughter”, “brother”, “sister” are exact. “Child” is not “son” — that one-word gap is the whole anchor stem (Section 2.1). Never assume a sex the stem does not give: a “child” could be either, and a “sibling” could be either.
4. Check the answer against the stem’s own clues, not against the options. The options in these items are designed to reward the first careless reading (son instead of daughter, father instead of grandfather). Read the stem once more after you have an answer; if a clue word (“not”, “only”, “no brother”) is unused, your answer is probably wrong.

2. Core notes — the three types the banks actually use

2.1 The anchor trap: “not his son” does not mean “not his child”

This is the family’s signature item, and the most-repeated single stem in Subject 12’s small families. Four tagged wordings, one logic:

• FPSC Assistant Director FIA 2001 (topic: Blood relation father daughter): “A is the father of B, but B is not A’s son. What is the relationship of B to A?” — daughter. B is A’s child (A is the father of B) and B is not a son, so B is a daughter. The trap is reading “not his son” as “not his child”.
• PPSC Assistants / Head Clerk BS-16 Local Government 2020 (topic: Blood relations — Logic): “A is the father of B but B is not A’s son. What is relationship of B to A.” — Daughter (option B in the banked key). Same logic, same answer.
• PPSC Assistant Local Government 2020 (topic: Blood Relations): “A is the father of B but B is not A’s son. What is the relationship of B to A?” — Daughter.
• PPSC Assistant PESSI 2020 (topic: Blood Relations): “A is father of B, but B is not son of A, then what is B?” — Daughter.

Two further wordings of the same stem sit outside the blood-relation tag and are worked in Section 6.1 — the answer never changes. If a stem ever says “B is not A’s child”, the answer would be different (then B is no relation at all) — but no bank stem says that, and the distinction is exactly what the examiners are testing.

2.2 Pointing-to-photograph items: work backwards from the photograph

Two tagged stems, both solved by step 2 of the method — replace the description with the person, starting at the far end:

• FPSC Research Officer National Assembly 2008 (topic: General Knowledge blood relation): “A man pointing to a photograph said, ‘I have no brother and no sister but that man’s father is my father’s son.’ What relationship does he have with me?” — Son. “My father’s son”, with no brother and no sister, can only be me. So that man’s father is me — that man is my son. The “no brother and no sister” clause is not decoration: without it, “my father’s son” could be my brother, and the answer would collapse. Always use every clause.
• FPSC Assistant Director Welfare Department 2015 (topic: Blood relations): “A lady pointing to a man in a photograph says, ‘The sister of the son of this man is my mother-in-law.’ How is the husband of the lady related to the man in the photograph?” — Maternal grandson. Work backwards: the son of the man in the photograph has a sister — that sister is the man’s daughter. That daughter is the lady’s mother-in-law, i.e. the mother of the lady’s husband. So the lady’s husband is the son of the man’s daughter — the man’s grandson through his daughter, which the banked answer names maternal grandson (grandson on the mother’s side, from the man’s point of view: his daughter’s son).
• OPC worked example, not a bank stem (One Paper Cracker, Maths pp. 63–64): “Pointing to Anwar’s photograph, Abdul said, ‘He is the son of the only daughter of the father of my brother.’ What relationship does Abdul have with Anwar?” — Abdul is Anwar’s maternal uncle. Far end first: the father of Abdul’s brother is Abdul’s father; the only daughter of Abdul’s father is Abdul’s sister; her son is Anwar, so Anwar is Abdul’s nephew, and Abdul is his maternal uncle. The book’s own solution sentence muddles the names (it calls the photograph man “the son of the sister of Anwar”); the chain above is the corrected reading, and the relation it gives — maternal uncle — matches the book’s answer. Taught as OPC method, not as a bank stem: the text scan in this run found no bank stem with this wording, and no mark is claimed for it.

2.3 Chain items: one link at a time, never two

Three tagged stems, each a short chain. The rule: resolve one link, name the person, then move to the next link. Never carry two unresolved links at once.

• FPSC Customs Inspector 2001 (topic: Blood relation): “A’s mother is aunt of my daughter. I have no brother. What is A to me?” — nephew. One link at a time: my daughter’s aunt, on the puzzle’s convention, is my sister (see the convention flag in Section 7 — the stem’s “I have no brother” is the clue that pins the aunt to the speaker’s own side rather than to a sister-in-law through a brother). A’s mother is my sister, so A is my sister’s son — my nephew.
• FPSC Inspector ANF 2010 (topic: Blood relation puzzle): “The old man’s son is my son’s uncle what is the old man to me?” — Father. My son’s uncle is my brother (the blood reading the puzzle intends). The old man’s son is my brother, so the old man is my father.
• PPSC Assistant Labour Department 2020 (topic: Blood Relations): “A is the mother of B and C, D is the husband of C. What is the relation of A to D?” — Mother-in-law. C’s mother is the mother of D’s wife — D’s mother-in-law. The B in the stem is a distractor link: it fixes that A is a mother of two, but the answer needs only A–C–D.

2.4 OPC extension — counting the whole family (not a bank type)

The banks ask who somebody is; the OPC book also asks how many people there are. Two worked examples, both recomputed in this run, both with zero bank stems behind them — taught as OPC method, no mark claimed:

• A husband and wife have five married sons, and each son has four children. How many members are in the family? — 32. Count every person the words create: husband + wife = 2; five married sons = 5 sons + 5 wives = 10; children = 5 × 4 = 20. Total 2 + 10 + 20 = 32. The trap is counting “five married sons” as 5 people — a married son brings a wife into the count.
• Mr. and Mrs. Sajjad have seven daughters. Each daughter has one brother. How many persons are in the family? — 10. Mr. + Mrs. Sajjad = 2; seven daughters = 7; and the “one brother” is one shared person — every daughter’s brother is the same boy. Total 2 + 7 + 1 = 10, not 2 + 7 + 7 = 16. The trap is multiplying the brother by the number of sisters.

3. Master table — type → method → bank example

4. Rapid-fire one-liners

• Father of B, but B is not his son → daughter. (Four tagged wordings, two untagged — Section 2.1, Section 6.1.)
• “My father’s son” with no brother and no sister → me.
• That man’s father is me → that man is my son.
• The sister of a man’s son is the man’s daughter.
• A lady’s mother-in-law is the mother of her husband; her husband is then the maternal grandson of the man whose daughter she is.
• My daughter’s aunt (puzzle convention) is my sister; her son is my nephew.
• My son’s uncle is my brother; that brother’s father is my father.
• A is the mother of C and D is C’s husband → A is D’s mother-in-law.
• “He is the only grandson of my mother’s father-in-law” → brother (Seema stem, Section 6.2).
• “That girl’s father is my father’s son”, no brother → the girl is his daughter (CSS MPT 2026 practice set, Section 6.3).
• Photograph, OPC wording: son of the only daughter of the father of my brother → maternal uncle (Section 2.2).
• Family count: five married sons + four children each → 32; seven daughters sharing one brother → 10 (Section 2.4, OPC method, no bank stem).
• Unused clue word (“not”, “only”, “no brother”) = wrong answer until proved otherwise.

5. Most-asked facts

Reasoning chapters repeat by type, not by fact, so this section names the most-asked types:

• The anchor stem is the family’s most-asked item by a wide margin: six wordings across six distinct files (FPSC 2001 ×2, PPSC 2020 ×4 counting Section 6) — more than half the family’s worked bank. Any student who knows only one blood-relation item should know this one.
• Photograph-pointing is the second type: four stems (FPSC 2008, FPSC 2015, Seema, CSS MPT 2026 practice set). Two of the four turn on “my father’s son” — that phrase is the family’s second most-asked device.
• Chain items are the remainder: three tagged stems (aunt, uncle, mother-in-law), one each, no repeats. They test the same backwards-replacement method, not new knowledge.
• By body and year: FPSC 2001–2015 (5 tagged stems) and PPSC 2020 (4 tagged stems). No exam-paper stem in the bank is later than 2020; the single 2026 item is a practice-set stem (Section 6.3).

6. Beyond the tag — four genuine stems the topic tag misses

The headline bankCount is topic-based, like every AR chapter’s. A text scan in this run (Section 10) found four genuine blood-relation stems whose topics do not contain “blood relation”. They are taught here in full, labelled as untagged, because leaving them out would understate the bank — but they are not folded into the headline 9, so the script count stays exactly reproducible.

6.1 Two more wordings of the anchor stem

• FPSC Assistant Manager 2001 (topic: Mathematics reasoning): “A is the father of B, but B is not A’s son. What is the relationship of B to A?” — daughter. Identical logic to Section 2.1, and a useful warning: the same stem can arrive under a mathematics topic label.
• PPSC Labour Officer 2020 (topic: Logical Deductions): “A is the father of B. But B is not the son of A. Then what is B to A?” — Daughter. Again identical logic. With Section 2.1, the anchor stem now stands at six wordings across six files — the family’s most-asked item, confirmed rather than merely repeated.

6.2 The Seema photograph stem

• General Mental Ability practice file (topic: General Mental Ability, no year in the file name): “Pointing to a photograph Seema said ‘He is the only grandson of my mother’s father-in-law’. How is the man in photograph related to Seema?” — Brother. Work it backwards: Seema’s mother’s father-in-law is the father of Seema’s mother’s husband — Seema’s paternal grandfather. His “only grandson”, a male, cannot be Seema herself (Seema is female in the stem’s framing); he is Seema’s brother. This is the only stem in the chapter where the speaker’s own sex decides the answer — the reason the stem says “He” and names the speaker “Seema”.

6.3 The CSS MPT 2026 practice-set stem — and why it does not earn a ⭐

• CSS MPT 2026 practice set (300 booklet) (topic: Reasoning Puzzles): “A man says, ‘I have no brother, and that girl’s father is my father’s son.’ Whose photograph is he pointing to?” — His daughter. “My father’s son” with no brother is me; the girl’s father is me, so the girl is his daughter. Same device as the FPSC 2008 stem (Section 2.2), with the question turned around (whose photograph, not what relation).
• Why no ⭐: this is the family’s only 2024–2026 signal, and it is a practice-set stem, not an exam-paper stem — the same standard that denied ⭐ in AR-04. It proves the type is still in circulation in 2026 preparation material; it does not prove examiners asked it in a 2024–2026 paper. The chapter says so plainly rather than upgrading the mark on a practice item.

7. Traps & confusions

• “Not his son” vs “not his child”. The anchor stem works only because B is A’s child. If a future stem says “not his child”, B is no relation — but no bank stem says that, and this chapter does not invent one.
• “My father’s son” without the sibling clause. With brothers or sisters, “my father’s son” could be my brother. The FPSC 2008 and CSS MPT 2026 stems both supply “no brother (and no sister)” precisely to close that reading. If a stem omits the clause, the item is ambiguous — flag it, don’t guess.
• The Customs 2001 aunt convention (flag, not hidden). The stem’s answer (nephew) rests on the puzzle convention that “my daughter’s aunt” means the speaker’s own sister (the paternal aunt). In ordinary life the aunt could also be the mother’s sister, which would make A a cousin, not a nephew. The stem’s “I have no brother” clause is what pins the aunt to the speaker’s side: it rules out the aunt being a sister-in-law through a brother, leaving the speaker’s sister as the intended reading. Teach the banked answer with the convention stated, not as a law of nature.
• Uncle by marriage vs uncle by blood. The ANF 2010 stem (“my son’s uncle”) is solved as “my brother”. A brother-in-law could also be called an uncle of my son, but the puzzle intends the blood reading, and the banked answer (Father) confirms it. If a stem ever specifies “maternal uncle” or “paternal uncle”, use exactly that side — no bank stem here does.
• Maternal vs paternal grandson. The Welfare 2015 answer is “maternal grandson” because the link runs through the man’s daughter (the lady’s mother-in-law). A grandson through a son would be a paternal grandson. The side follows the daughter/son link, not the grandson’s sex.
• In-law direction. “A is the mother of C, D is C’s husband” gives A as D’s mother-in-law — not D as A’s son-in-law (that is the reverse direction, and a different question). Always answer the direction the stem asks.
• Duplicate file warning. The PPSC Labour Officer 2020 stem (Section 6.1) also appears as a copy inside the monster dump’s website extract; it is the same archive file, not a second source, and is counted once.
• Family count: married sons bring wives; brothers are shared. “Five married sons” is 10 people, not 5 (Section 2.4); “each daughter has one brother” is 1 boy, not one per daughter. Both errors come from counting words instead of people.

8. Memory tricks

• “Not son = daughter, if child is given”: the anchor stem in one breath. Say “child, not son” before you answer any “not his son” item.
• “Father’s son, no brother = me”: the photograph-stem key. If the stem gives you the no-sibling clause, use it immediately — it exists to delete the brother reading.
• “Far end first”: for every long description (“the sister of the son of this man”), start at the far end (the son) and walk back one person at a time, naming each one aloud.
• “Speaker at the centre”: draw the speaker in the middle of a scrap diagram and hang each named person off them. Blood-relation items are lost in prose and won in diagrams — the same habit as AR-04’s turn diagrams.
• “Side follows the link”: maternal/paternal is decided by whether the middle link is a daughter or a son, never by guessing.
• “Count people, not words”: for a family-count item, list each group as people (spouses count, a shared brother counts once) before adding — Section 2.4.

9. Visuals (specs only — site build renders these)

• Family-tree mini-diagrams: each Section 2/Section 6 example as a three-generation tree with the speaker marked and the asked person highlighted; the anchor stem as a two-person tree with “son” crossed out and “daughter” circled.
• Backwards-replacement strip: the Welfare 2015 sentence as a chain of replacements (son’s sister → daughter → mother-in-law → husband’s mother), one arrow per step.
• The Seema stem as a tree: mother’s father-in-law → paternal grandfather → only grandson → brother.
• Type card: the three types (Section 2.1–Section 2.3) as three panels, each with its one-line method from the master table.

10. Practice this topic

Pull a timed set from the verified banks using the practice query in the front-matter (topic tags Blood Relations / Blood relation, plus the four Section 6 stems): 9 topic-tagged stems across 9 distinct files, 13 stems worked in total across 13 distinct source files. Book mode: ← Previous: Direction Sense (AR-04) · Next: Other Reasoning (AR-06) →

Sources & count (Section 10 honesty note). Count by script hidden_files/goldmine-notes-count-ar05.py (counts JSON hidden_files/goldmine-notes-ar05-counts.json), same bank dirs and topic-based classification order as the Subject 12 structure count (hidden_files/goldmine-notes-count-ar12.py): 585 files / 56,482 questions scanned; 10 rows including duplicates; 9 unique topic-tagged stems across 9 distinct files; filename-year files 2024–2026: none. This matches the structure page’s “9 unique stems, 9 files” exactly — no correction needed, unlike AR-04. Genuine-stem sources (tagged): FPSC Assistant Director FIA 2001 (1), FPSC Customs Inspector 2001 (1), FPSC Research Officer National Assembly 2008 (1), FPSC Inspector ANF 2010 (1), FPSC Assistant Director Welfare Department 2015 (1), PPSC Assistants / Head Clerk BS-16 Local Government 2020 (1), PPSC Assistant Labour Department 2020 (1), PPSC Assistant Local Government 2020 (1), PPSC Assistant PESSI 2020 (1). A supplementary text scan in this run (stems mentioning photograph-pointing, “father of”, “my father’s son”, “my son’s uncle” outside the blood-relation tag) found 4 further genuine stems, all worked in Section 6 and all hand-verified against their banked answers: FPSC Assistant Manager 2001 (anchor, daughter), PPSC Labour Officer 2020 (anchor, Daughter), the General Mental Ability Seema stem (Brother), and the CSS MPT 2026 practice-set stem (His daughter). The remaining text-scan hits were false positives (“father of Computer”, “father of the nation”, proverb and vocabulary items) and are not counted. The monster-dump website-extract copy of the Labour Officer 2020 file is a duplicate of the archive file, counted once. Classification is topic-based for the headline count, so the headline 9 is a floor; with Section 6 the worked total is 13 stems across 13 distinct source files. Every banked answer taught here was verified by hand against its stem in this run: the four tagged anchor wordings plus the two untagged ones all key Daughter; the Welfare 2015 chain resolves to Maternal grandson; the Research Officer 2008 chain resolves to Son; the Customs 2001 chain resolves to nephew under the stated paternal-aunt convention (Section 7); the ANF 2010 chain resolves to Father; the Labour 2020 chain resolves to Mother-in-law; the Seema stem resolves to Brother; the CSS MPT 2026 stem resolves to His daughter. No fact in this chapter comes from memory; methods are standard procedural types, and every worked example is a bank stem with its banked answer. OPC extension (this run, 2 November 2026): the One Paper Cracker Maths logical-reasoning block (pp. 50–64, OCR hidden_files/final-notes-intake/work/maths-opc-pp51-60.txt and maths-opc-pp61-70.txt, 20/20 pages clean) was checked against this chapter. Its Section 2.2 photograph wording (Anwar, maternal uncle) and its Section 2.4 family-count items (32; 10) are the only additions, both OPC-sourced and both with zero bank stems — the headline bankCount is therefore unchanged (9 tagged + 4 untagged = 13 worked bank stems). The rest of the block is checked-duplicate here: number series, alphabet series, analogies, coding-decoding and direction sense live in AR-01–AR-04; statement-and-conclusion and Venn-circle reasoning are AR-06 Section 7.4/Section 13’s method; the calendar item (p. 63, Saturday → Wednesday) is AR-06 Section 5’s stem verbatim. The OPC book’s muddled solution sentence for the Anwar item is corrected in Section 2.2, not repeated.