Blood Relations
Outline and Learning Goals
Understand how family trees are constructed using symbols.
Learn to decode relationships from statements, codes, and pointing.
Avoid the most common traps that examiners set.
Build speed by using a simple 3-step method for every question.
The Puzzle That Traps Most Students
A man points to a woman and says, “She is the daughter of my grandfather’s only son.” Who is she?
Take a moment. If you said “sister” without a second thought, you are already thinking like a topper. If you felt your head spin, you are completely normal. Blood Relations feels like untying a knot in a wet shoelace — until you learn to see the hidden structure.
Why This Chapter Feels Like a Maze
Most students treat Blood Relations as a vocabulary test: memorize 50 relation names and hope for the best. But the examiner never asks, “What is the husband of your father’s sister called?” They wrap relationships in multiple layers of wording. The real skill is not memory — it is building a visual map step by step.
Here’s the truth: every single Blood Relations question is a tiny logic puzzle that can be cracked if you draw it. And you only need four symbols to draw any family on earth.
The 4 Symbols That Replace 50 Words
Draw these on rough paper the moment you see a question:
□ Male
○ Female
— (horizontal line) Marriage bond
│ (vertical line) Parent-child link
Siblings are drawn by connecting them to the same horizontal line, with a vertical line going up to their parents. Once you sketch even five seconds of this, the answer becomes visible — like a map suddenly flipping right-side up.
🧠 Pause and sketch: Draw a father and mother connected by a horizontal line. Below them, draw a son and a daughter on the same sibling line. Did your mind already name the relationships without any words?
The Golden 3-Step Method for Any Question
Find the anchor – The person who is speaking or the person “pointing”. Make that person ‘ME’ in the diagram.
Add information sentence by sentence – Do not skip. Draw one relationship at a time. Use the symbols. Do not assume gender from names.
Read the final question backwards – “How is A related to B?” means you start from B and trace the path back to A in your family tree. The path tells you the exact relationship.
These three steps will never fail you. Not in SSC, not in Banking, not in Railway or Police exams. The only reason marks are lost is because students skip Step 2 and start guessing.
Making Sense of Paternal and Maternal — The ‘P-M’ Trick
This is the single most confused area, and I will make it vanish in ten seconds.
Paternal side → Father’s family – Uncle = Chacha, Tau; Aunt = Bua.
Maternal side → Mother’s family – Uncle = Mama; Aunt = Mausi.
Remember: P for Papa’s side, M for Mummy’s side. The moment you read “mother’s brother”, your brain should shout “Maternal Uncle = Mama”. No confusion, no hesitation.
🧠 Quick recall: Without scrolling up, who is your father’s sister’s daughter to you? Use the P-M trick to decide paternal/maternal and then trace the path. (Answer: Paternal cousin, Bua’s daughter.)
How to Crack Coded Relations Without Freezing
Examiners love equations like: A + B means A is brother of B, A × B means A is wife of B. Then they ask: P × Q + R ÷ S.
The trap? Students try to solve it in their head like algebra. Never do that. Just translate the code word by word and start drawing:
Step 1: P × Q → P is wife of Q. Draw P (○) married to Q (□).
Step 2: Q + R → Q is brother of R. Draw R next to Q on the same sibling line.
Step 3: Keep going till the chain ends. Then trace the relation asked.
No shortcuts. No mental multiplications. Draw. Every. Single. Time.
🧠 Apply now: If A + B means A is father of B, A - B means A is sister of B, draw the tree for X + Y - Z. What is X to Z? (X is father of Y, and Y is sister of Z — so X is also the father of Z, and Y is Z’s sister.)
The “Only” Word — A Superpower, Not a Trap
When a statement says, “She is the daughter of my grandfather’s only son”, the word only crunches the family tree instantly. Grandfather’s only son = my father. So she is my father’s daughter = my sister.
Only eliminates branches. Spot it, underline it, and your diagram becomes smaller and clearer. Many students overthink and start imagining extra siblings. That is exactly what the examiner wants.
Summary Table: Crack Any Blood Relation in 45 Seconds
| Step | Action | Why |
|---|---|---|
| 1 | Underline gender markers (brother, sister, he, she, wife, husband) | Avoids gender assumption traps |
| 2 | Pick the anchor (the speaker or ‘pointing’ person) and start the tree with □/○ | Gives a fixed starting point |
| 3 | Draw each sentence immediately using symbols | Prevents mental mixing of relations |
| 4 | Mark generations clearly — one row per generation | Stops cross-generation confusion |
| 5 | For coded relations, decode operator by operator, no skipping | Error-free translation |
| 6 | Answer only after tracing the path in the tree | Eliminates guesswork |
📅 Review after 2 days: Before you sleep on day 3, take one PYQ-style question from any exam and apply this exact 3-step method. Spaced recall will fuse these steps into your automatic habit.
⚠️ Caution: Examiner’s Trap
- “Can’t be determined” is a valid answer
In many tricky questions, the gender of a key person is not revealed. The options will list two or three possible relationships, and the correct choice will be “None of these” or “Cannot be determined”. Never force a male gender on a name like “Kamal” or “Rajan” — wait for proof.
- Dual relations hidden in plain sight
A single statement can create two relationships at once. For example, “A is the only brother of B and also the son of C.” This makes A both brother and son. The examiner will ask, “How is B related to C?” If you miss the dual role, you will pick the wrong option. Always check if the person you’re looking at plays more than one role in the tree.
- Twisted language to derail you
Instead of “A is the son of B”, the paper may say, “B is the mother of a boy named A”. The meaning is identical, but the sentence structure can freeze your brain. Practice reading relationships in different forms — active and passive — until your mind instantly extracts the core relation.