All 26 VARC questions in exam order, with the passage topic, what each question asks, the answer and the reasoning.
VA mix: 3 para summary, 3 para jumbles, 2 odd sentence out, 0 sentence placement. RC themes: Language, Arts & Literature; Economics & Business; History, Politics & Society; Philosophy, Psychology & Culture.
TopicVery Large Telescope
AsksArrange four sentences on the Very Large Telescope.
Logic: Its four large mirrors (2) → "it" also has smaller auxiliary telescopes (1) → combined, they mimic a far larger instrument (4) → "this" could pick out an astronaut on the Moon (3).
Sentence 2 introduces the telescope, and sentence 1's "it" adds the auxiliaries. Sentence 4 explains combining them, and sentence 3's "this" states what that achieves.
Q2–Q6 · 5 questions · Inference, Except / NOT, Word / phrase in context, Main idea & summary
AsksWhat the claim that seeing rests on "covenants" with images means.
Correct option: Seeing becomes meaningful through agreed understandings between viewer and image.
A restates the dependence on shared conventions. The option turning it into a vague possibility located inside the images misreads it.
AsksWhich statement cannot be validly inferred.
Correct option: That institutional structures must exist before perception can be analysed.
The passage ties vision to the body and to a culture's interpretive devices, and never makes institutions a precondition. That studying the structures of perception teaches a lot is supported.
AsksThe meaning of "epiphenomena" in the last sentence.
Correct option: Secondary by-products, supplemental to the real evidence.
The passage contrasts treating images as evidence with treating them as mere side-effects. "Amenable to analysis" describes what scholars want images to be, not the rejected view.
AsksThe meaning of the sentence that no social analysis can fully account for two great artists.
Correct option: Social explanations can't fully capture such artists' genius.
B restates the limit on social analysis. The options saying they can't be analysed at all, or that no analyses exist, overstate it.
AsksThe keywords that best capture the passage.
Correct option: Imagery, visual practices, lifeworlds, perceptual structures.
These cover images, how they are used, how they shape social life, and how vision is structured. Aesthetic value and genius are side points.
TopicInformation capitalism
AsksFive sentences on information, ownership and capitalism.
Logic: 3 → 1 → 5 → 4: inventions exist to create property rights → data monopolies in e-business → yet information is abundant → a counter-trend treats information as a shared good.
The four sentences discuss owning information. Sentence 2 makes a broad claim about a new form of capitalism, breaking the theme.
TopicNuclear energy
AsksArrange four sentences on nuclear fission and radiation.
Logic: Large-scale fission is our most dangerous change to nature (2) → the resulting radiation is the worst pollutant (4) → "but" the public fixates on the bomb (1) → peaceful uses may be even more dangerous (3).
Sentence 2 introduces fission, and sentence 4's "the resultant" refers to it. Sentence 1's "but" turns to the public's focus, and sentence 3 counters it.
TopicNarratives of sexual assault
AsksFive sentences on narratives of sexual assault.
Logic: 5 → 2 → 3 → 1: such accounts have become a genre → they give perpetrators futures and victims pasts → victims' later lives lack vocabulary → the focus is on the moment that divides their lives.
The four sentences develop the past-versus-future framing. Sentence 4 is about the questions put to victims, a topic the others don't raise.
TopicChange blindness
AsksArrange four sentences on "change blindness".
Logic: We think we notice every change, but the brain can't process it all (1) → "it" can't register everything around you (3) → sometimes big changes happen unnoticed (4) → psychologists call this change blindness (2).
Sentence 3's "it" refers to the brain in sentence 1. Sentence 2 names the tendency described in sentence 4, so 4 comes before 2.
TopicIntuition and information
AsksSummary of a paragraph on intuition versus information.
Correct option: Intuition is fast but hard to explain; information-based decisions are slower but can be justified.
B states the contrast without ranking either. The closest option declares information-based decisions better and ignores intuition.
Q12–Q16 · 5 questions · Main idea & summary, Inference, Except / NOT, Author's view & tone
AsksThe argument of the final paragraph.
Correct option: Small-scale renewables promise local, democratic energy, but weak returns push the sector toward concentrated control.
A keeps both sides. The other options are too narrow, too absolute, or bring in an efficiency comparison the paragraph never makes.
AsksWhat can be inferred from the first paragraph.
Correct option: The author has doubts about the consequences of renewable energy.
The paragraph says renewables need closer scrutiny for their social and environmental costs. Non-renewables aren't discussed, and the concern goes beyond profitability.
AsksWhich statement, if false, would support the passage.
Correct option: That renewable energy has little or no environmental impact.
If this claim is false, renewables do have a substantial environmental impact, which is exactly what the passage argues through land and water use, mining and electronic waste. The equal-cost and profitability claims aren't the passage's concern, and denying that small-scale renewables are unsustainable would work against its point about investor returns.
AsksWhich statement, if true, would NOT support the passage.
Correct option: That renewables' possible harms must be studied before they are offered as investments.
The passage calls for examining impacts but never links this to investment appeal. Concentrated control in agricultural finance, toxic waste feeding injustice and marginalised communities bearing mining costs all back its points.
AsksThe practice the author would most likely support.
Correct option: Stricter global rules for fairer toxic-waste disposal.
The passage shows waste flowing to the Global South and marginalised communities. The author doubts small local systems can attract the returns needed, so that option fails.
Q17–Q20 · 4 questions · Author's view & tone, Inference, Except / NOT
AsksThe tone of the question about toiling as a peasant versus turning pirate.
Correct option: Ironic, pointing to why so many turned to piracy.
The question highlights the absurdity of honest labour paying far less than one raid. The author isn't mocking peasants or offering an analytical contrast.
AsksWhat the remark about empire-builders implies about the author's view of colonialism.
Correct option: Colonialism was organised piracy on a grand scale.
The anecdote that emperors and pirates differ only in scale casts empire-builders as the biggest pirates. The author describes rather than blames, and makes no past-versus-present comparison.
AsksWhat the author implies would best control piracy in the long run.
Correct option: Eliminating poverty and income disparities in affected regions.
The passage ties piracy to poverty in places globalisation has bypassed. Welfare spending once worked elsewhere only because money reached the poor despite corruption, so that option is weaker.
AsksWhich factor the author does NOT blame for the rise in piracy.
Correct option: Reduced surveillance of the seas.
The passage says patrols are costly and can't cover everything, not that they have declined. High ransoms, more shipping and colonialism's legacy are cited.
TopicDefining urban and rural
AsksSummary of a paragraph on defining urban and rural.
Correct option: Because places blend, measurable criteria for "urban" need richer combinations and human judgement.
A matches the call for several criteria interpreted with judgement. The closest option places that judgement on the objective method instead.
TopicHobbes and sovereign states
AsksSummary of a paragraph on Hobbes and the sovereign state.
Correct option: Sovereign states arose from an exchange: insecure people gave up rights to a sovereign in return for protection.
D keeps both the exchange and the insecurity driving it. The closest option mentions only the surrender of rights.
Q23–Q26 · 4 questions · Except / NOT, Detail, Purpose of example
AsksWhich statement cannot logically follow from the passage.
Correct option: That aggression comes from abnormally low neural regulation of testosterone.
The biological theory in the passage concerns weak neural inhibition of aggressive impulses, not testosterone regulation. The definition requiring an unwilling victim and suicide as self-directed aggression both follow.
AsksThe three variables by which theories of aggression are grouped.
Correct option: The aggressor, the situation, and the target.
The passage sorts theories by who acts, the setting and who is targeted. Hostile, instrumental and hormonal are types and causes, not the grouping variables.
AsksThe broader point of the torture example.
Correct option: Some aggression aims at a goal other than harm, using pain only as a means.
Torturers can inflict pain dispassionately to extract intelligence. The reliability of extracted information is never discussed.
AsksWhich argument the author does NOT make.
Correct option: That societies control aggression by moderating the death instinct.
The death instinct appears only as a proposed biological source of aggression. Testosterone and male aggression, biological perspectives, and hostile versus instrumental aggression are all discussed.
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