CAT 2025 Question Paper and Answer Key PDF (Nov 30, 2025) (Slot 2)

CAT 2025 Slot 2 Question Paper and Answer Key PDF with Detailed Solutions is available here to download and attempt as a test. CAT 2025 Slot 2 was conducted on November 30, 2025, from 12:30 PM to 2:30 PM by IIM Kozhikode. The question paper contained 68 questions across VARC, DILR, and Quantitative Aptitude, carrying 204 marks.

CAT 2025 Nov 30 Slot 2 Question Paper with Detailed Solution; Download PDF

(DIRECTIONS for questions 1-4)

The passage below is accompanied by a set of questions. Choose the best answer to each question.

Time and again, whenever a population [of Mexican tetra fish] was swept into a cave and survived long enough for natural selection to have its way, the eyes disappeared. “But it’s not that everything has been lost in cavefish . . . Many enhancements have also happened.” . . . Studies have found that cave-dwelling fish can detect lower levels of amino acids than surface fish can. Read More

1. Which one of the following results for the cross between surface fish (with eyes) and cavefish (without eyes) would invalidate Riddle’s inference from the experiment?

1. Some offspring with eyes had white fat.

2. Some offspring with eyes had yellow fat.a

3. Some eyeless offspring had white fat.

4. Only eyeless offspring had yellow fat.

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2. Which one of the following best explains why the “apparent inefficiency” is “unavoidable”?

1. The lack of light in the caves kills the eye cells in the developing Mexican tetra cavefish embryo.

2. The inefficiency resulting from eyelessness is compensated by enhancements like more tastebuds in Mexican tetra cavefish.

3. Mexican tetra cavefish are similar to non-cave-dwelling variants in their early stages of development.

4. The caves have poor and inconsistent availability of food and nutrition for Mexican tetra cavefish.

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3. On the basis of the information in the passage, what is the most likely function of carotenoids in Mexican tetra cavefish?

1. To render bright yellow colour to the cavefish.

2. To act as a substitute for eyes.

3. To help the fat cells store nutrients.

4. To control inflammation from the bursting of fat cells.

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4. All of the following statements from the passage describe adaptation in Mexican tetra cavefish EXCEPT:

1. “Since relatively little lives or grows in their caves, the fish are likely surviving on a meager diet of mostly bat feces and organic waste that washes in during the rainy season.”

2. “‘But when these cells get too big, they can burst, which is why we often see chronic inflammation in humans and other animals that have stored a lot of fat in their tissues.’”

3. “It’s easy to see why cavefish would be at a disadvantage if they were to maintain expensive tissues they aren’t using.”

4. “Even in their sparse cave conditions, wild cavefish can sometimes get very fat, says Riddle.”

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5. Five jumbled sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. Sporting a copper-coloured pixie cut and a pair of pink feather antlers, Torres himself resembles a child’s doodle.

2. His casual millennial delivery, peppered with “um”s and “ah”s, makes surreal concepts sound like items on a brunch menu.

3. Though he may have failed so far in his colour-scouting mission (he hasn’t yet found a new one, he admits), this hour leaves you tickled pink.

4. Like his previous show, My Favourite Shapes, this is an hour of sit-down comedy aided by an overhead camera which relays Torres’s theories – illustrated with crayon squiggles – on to a screen behind him.

5. His inquisitive mind produces interconnected ideas about Catholicism, the blandness of Pixar and what orange sounds like, while his insights train us to spot “highly purple behaviour”.

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6. The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. As books age, the cellulose and lignin in the paper begin to break down, releasing a mix of volatile organic compounds into the air.
2. Old books carry a scent that many people instantly recognize—and even love.
3. These compounds are benzaldehyde, which gives off an almond-like scent, vanillin, which smells like vanilla, ethyl hexanol (floral scent), toluene (sweet), and furfural (which has a slightly bready scent).
4. This familiar aroma isn't just dust or mildew; it's actually a result of slow chemical changes happening inside the paper and ink.

1. 1234

2. 2413

3. 4213

4. 3124

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7. The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: The region’s Western customers found it hard to believe that Dhaka muslin could possibly have been made by human hands – there were rumour that it was woven by mermaids, fairies and even ghosts.
Paragraph: Once upon the silty banks of the Meghna River, a miracle was spun — a fabric so light it was called “baft-hawa”, or woven air. This was Dhaka Muslin — the world’s most coveted cloth. ____(1)____. Handspun from a rare cotton called Phuti Karpas, found nowhere else on Earth, and woven with a 16-step sacred ritual — beginning with cleaning the cotton using the teeth of a river catfish! ____(2)____. Every spring, the maple-like leaves pushed up through the grey, silty soil to produce a single daffodilyellow flower twice a year, which gave way to a snowy floret of cotton fibres. ____(3)____. Spun at dawn on boats by sharp-eyed young women, its threads were so fine the elderly could barely see them. Motifs of wildflowers, river breeze, and soul were etched into each piece — some so light, a 91-metre bolt could pass through a ring, or a 60' length fit inside a snuffbox. It draped Greek goddesses, Roman nobles, Mughal emperors, and European aristocrats. Marie Antoinette, Empress Joséphine — even Jane Austen adored its floating grace. ____(4)____.

1. Option 1

2. Option 2

3. Option 3

4. Option 4

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8. Five jumbled sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, 4, and 5), related to a topic, are given below. Four of them can be put together to form a coherent paragraph. Identify the odd sentence out and key in the number of that sentence as your answer.

1. Pfas are a class of about 15,000 compounds most frequently used to make products water-, stain- and grease-resistant.

2. New research suggests exposure to some common perfluoroalkyl and polyfluoroalkyl substances (Pfas) cause changes to gene activity and that these changes are linked to health problems including multiple cancers, neurological disorders and autoimmune disease.

3. These Pfas compounds are dubbed “forever chemicals” because they do not naturally break down in the environment.

4. The research may also point toward other diseases potentially caused by Pfas that have not yet been identified.

5. The findings are a major step toward determining the mechanism by which the chemicals cause disease and could help doctors identify, detect and treat health problems for those exposed to PFAS before the issues advance.

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 9-12)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

Different sciences exhibit different science cultures and practices. For example, in astronomy, observation – until what is today called the new astronomy – had always been limited to what could be seen within the limits of optical light. Indeed, until early modernity the limits to optical light were also limits of what humans could themselves see within their limited and relative perceptual spectrum of human vision. Read More

9. All of the following statements may be rejected as valid inferences from the passage EXCEPT:

1. the advances in telescopy made by Newton with reflecting telescopes allowed early modern astronomers to observe the phases of Venus and the satellites of Jupiter.

2. Isaac Newton’s experiments with reflecting telescopes were the earliest versions of the “new astronomy” referred to in the passage.

3. interventionist instruments, or instruments that intervene directly in scientific inquiry, are different from embodied instruments, or instruments that embody scientific inquiry.

4. the author distinguishes between the receptive and interventionist uses of instruments in the sciences by comparing astronomy and biology, respectively.

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10. Which one of the following observations is a valid conclusion to draw from the statement that “the sciences involved are today highly instrumentalised and could not progress successfully without constant improvements upon the respective instrumental trajectories”?

1. The growth of scientific technologies has led to the embodiment of progress in the trajectories of improvement.

2. In both astronomy and microbiology, progress has been the consequence of improvements in the instruments they use.

3. Highly instrumentalised work in the sciences has resulted in the progressive improvement of scientific constants.

4. The use of instruments in scientific trajectories must be respected in order to see successful progress in them.

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11. To which one of the following instruments would the characterisations of instruments in the passage be least applicable?

1. Kitchen oven

2. Scalpel

3. Milestone

4. Saxophone

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12. None of the following statements, if true, contradicts the arguments in the passage EXCEPT:

1. because of the relatively recent entry of computational machinery in mathematics, the field is only now beginning to develop a scientific culture.

2. some scientific instruments may be classified as both receptive and interventional in their functions.

3. like telescopy, microscopy has also sought to move beyond the visible spectrum to be able to detect objects that are invisible in that spectrum.

4. Isaac Newton’s discovery of gravity was accomplished without the help of instruments.

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13. The given sentence is missing in the paragraph below. Decide where it best fits among the options 1, 2, 3, or 4 indicated in the paragraph.
Sentence: While taste is related to judgment, with thinkers at the time often writing, for example, about “judgments of taste” or using the two terms interchangeably, taste retains a vital link to pleasure, embodiment, and personal specificity that is too often elided in post-Kantian ideas about judgment—a link that Arendt herself was working to restore.
Paragraph: ____(1) ____. Denneny focused on taste rather than judgment in order to highlight what he believed was a crucial but neglected historical change. ____(2) ____. Over the course of the seventeenth century and early eighteenth century, across Western Europe, the word taste took on a new extension of meaning, no longer referring specifically to gustatory sensation and the delights of the palate but becoming, for a time, one of the central categories for aesthetic—and ethical—thinking. ____(3) ____. Tracing the history of taste in Spanish, French, and British aesthetic theory, as Denneny did, also provides a means to recover the compelling and relevant writing of a set of thinkers who have been largely neglected by professional philosophy. ____(4) ____.

1. Option 4

2. Option 2

3. Option 1

4. Option 3

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The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

14. For millennia, in the process of opening up land for agriculture, gardens, grazing and hunting, humans have created ecological “mosaics”, or “patchworks”: landscapes holding a mixture of habitats, like meadows, gardens and forests. These were not designed as nature reserves, but often catered to hugely diverse animal life. Research indicates that European hay meadows cultivated for animal feed were actually more successful at preserving a vast array of species than meadows explicitly cultivated for biodiversity. Studying the early Holocene, researchers have found that human presence was about as likely to increase biodiversity as reduce it. Of course, not all humancreated landscapes have the same value. A paved subdivision with astroturfed lawns is very different to a village with diverse vegetable and flower gardens. But scientists continue to find evidence that the old idea of humans as antithetical to nature is also wrong-headed, and that rosy visions of thriving, human-free environments are more imaginary than real.

1. In our attempts to shape the world around us to our needs, humans have often created landscapes like meadows, gardens, and forests, which support hugely diverse species, and are more successful at preserving them, than parks created specifically for this.

2. In terms of preserving biodiversity, scientists are finding increasing evidence that human action is not always antithetical to nature, but often assists the preservation of meadows, landscapes, and flourishing of species.

3. Contrary to the idea that humans always hurt nature and that it thrives in their absence, a lot of human action across history has been equally likely to increase biodiversity than reduce it, often creating varied ecological landscapes that support a vast array of species.

4. Studying the early Holocene and human practices over millennia, researchers say that while agricultural meadows, gardens, and forests were not explicitly designed as nature reserves, they actually preserved a vast array of species, belying the idea that humans harm nature.

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The passage given below is followed by four summaries. Choose the option that best captures the essence of the passage.

15. In 1903, left-wing feminist Elizabeth Magie invented The Landlord’s Game, the original version of what became Monopoly. It was designed as a powerful teaching tool to illustrate the dangers of monopolies and how wealth could concentrate in the hands of a few. The game featured a circular path, properties, and a “Go to Jail” space. Magie created two rule sets: one “monopolist” version where players crushed opponents through accumulation, and another, more radical “Prosperity” version, where everyone shared in the wealth, promoting fairness and equity. Years later, unemployed Charles Darrow sold a simplified version to Parker Brothers. They paid Magie only $500 for her patent—without royalties—and credited Darrow as the sole inventor. For decades, his tale of inventing the game in his basement remained the official story, while Magie’s name and her original, anti-capitalist message were left in the shadows.

1. Parker Brothers’ capitalist intent led to them acquiring from Charles Darrow a simplified version of Elizabeth Magie’s original game, transforming it into a widespread commercial success while providing her only minimal financial compensation and granting scant public recognition.

2. Only one version of Monopoly became famous because of Charles Darrow’s relentless basement work, carefully refining Elizabeth Magie’s original idea into an engaging and entertaining pastime that he successfully patented and sold, symbolizing what many regarded as the ultimate triumph of individual ingenuity.

3. Celebrated icons of the gaming industry, Charles Darrow and Parker Brothers, snatched the feminist icon Elizabeth Magie’s original design and transformed Monopoly into a worldwide phenomenon, while barely acknowledging her.

4. It is ironical that a left-wing feminist lost credit for the Landlord’s Game to an unemployed man, who plagiarised and sold one version of the twin game to Parker Brothers for a meagre sum, denying her royalties.

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16. The four sentences (labelled 1, 2, 3, and 4) given below, when properly sequenced, would yield a coherent paragraph. Decide on the proper sequencing of the order of the sentences and key in the sequence of the four numbers as your answer.
1. ‘Literature on screen’ suggests something more capacious and defining than citation: the possibility that literary adaptations are at once cinema and literature
2. Even though a growing number of films eligible for Academy Awards for Best Screenplay Based on Material from Another Medium borrow that material from print journalism, franchise characters, television series, comic books, video games and toys, academic studies of adaptation remain stubbornly attached to literature as cinema’s natural progenitor.
3. It is as if adaptation studies, by borrowing the cultural cachet of literature, sought to claim its institutional respectability and gravitas even while insuring adaptation’s enduring aesthetic and methodological subordination to literature proper.
4. Beneath this contradictory notion of film adaptations as not merely hybrid texts but texts holding dual citizenship in two modes of presentation is an even more pervasive legacy that haunts adaptation studies: the assumption that the primary context within which adaptations are to be studied is literature.

1. 1423

2. 3214

3. 4132

4. 3421

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 17-20)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

This book takes the position that setting in literature is more than just backdrop, that important insight into literary texts can be made by paying close attention to how authors craft place, as well as to how place functions in a narrative. The authors included in this reference work engage deeply with either real or imagined geographies. Read More

17. Which one of the following is a valid conclusion to draw from the author’s statement that, “The pursuit of such a topic speaks to the valuable knowledge produced from bridging disciplines and combining material from both the arts and the sciences to better understand the human condition.”?

1. A comprehensive bridging of the human condition can best be achieved by a disciplined pursuit of human understanding.

2. The literary descriptions of the emotions we experience in the places we visit can contribute to our understanding of the arts and sciences.

3. A comprehensive understanding of the valuable knowledge produced by the arts and sciences can best be achieved by studying the human condition.

4. A comprehensive understanding of the human condition can best be achieved by combining the findings of disciplines from the arts and the sciences.

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18. Which one of the following is not true of the argument in the second paragraph?

1. The spiritual experience of a place may be considered as real as the physical experience of it.

2. The emotional and spiritual experience of a place can replace a surveyor’s map

3. Analysing the literary descriptions of a place can give us a sense of how people relate emotionally to it.

4. Literary accounts of places can be filled with histories, manifested as memory or imagination.

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19. The author uses the example of the literary description of place to illustrate that:

1. architects use diverse methods to calibrate the noises and lights of a given place.

2. the absence of other people, animals, and so on in a place can profoundly affect its inhabitants.

3. scientific approaches to place are more accurate than literary ones.

4. literature can convey how different people experience the same place differently.

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20. All of the following statements, if false, would contradict the arguments in the passage, EXCEPT that:

1. humans do not interact with places in subjective, emotional ways because places are only physical topography.

2. literature provides us with deep insights into the ways in which movement and migration affect physical geography.

3. descriptions of places do not need satellite imagery or other visual aids to give a “real” sense of the place.

4. highly vivid writing, employing the language of the senses, can capture the multi-modal manner in which humans experience places.

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(DIRECTIONS for questions 21-24)

The passage below is accompanied by four questions. Based on the passage, choose the best answer for each question.

In [my book “Searches”], I chronicle how big technology companies have exploited human language for their gain. We let this happen, I argue, because we also benefit somewhat from using the products. It’s a dynamic that makes us complicit in big tech’s accumulation of wealth and power: we’re both victims and beneficiaries. Read More

21. The author compares AI-generated texts with “a beige office building” for all of the following reasons EXCEPT:

1. AI aims to foster a feeling of trust and credibility among its users.

2. AI tends to blame its training data when scrutinised for its biases.

3. AI-generated texts often exhibit a warm, polite, and collegial tone.

4. AI generates generalised responses that lack specificity and nuance.

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22. On the basis of the purpose of the examples in the passage, pick the odd one out from the following AI-generated responses mentioned in the passage:

1. “When I queried ChatGPT about its rhetoric, it responded: ‘The way I communicate is designed to foster trust and confidence in my responses, which can be both helpful and potentially misleading'.”

2. “Over time, ChatGPT seemed to be guiding me to write a more positive book about big tech – including editing my description of OpenAI’s CEO, Sam Altman, to call him ‘a visionary and a pragmatist’.”

3. “When I prompted Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator to produce a picture of engineers and space explorers, it gave me an entirely male cast of characters . . .”

4. “. . . when my father asked ChatGPT to edit his writing, it transmuted his perfectly correct Indian English into American English.”

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23. All of the following statements from the passage affirm the disjunct between the claims about AI made by tech companies and what AI actually does EXCEPT:

1. “In my own ChatGPT dialogues, I wanted to enact how the product’s veneer of collegial neutrality could lull us into absorbing false or biased responses without much critical engagement.”

2. “I’m not aware of research on whether ChatGPT tends to favor big tech, OpenAI or Altman, and I can only guess why it seemed that way in our conversation.”

3. “It’s a dynamic that makes us complicit in big tech’s accumulation of wealth and power: we’re both victims and beneficiaries.”

4. “When I prompted Microsoft’s Bing Image Creator to produce a picture of engineers and space explorers, it gave me an entirely male cast of characters . . .”

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24. The author of the passage is least likely to agree with which one of the following claims?

1. When we use AI, we become accomplices to the exploitative practices of big tech companies.

2. The neutrality of AI is conducive to critical thinking.

3. The neutrality of AI is motivated by economic considerations.

4. ChatGPT favours AI companies and their officials, like Sam Altman, in its responses.

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CAT 2025 Exam Analysis (Slot 2)

CAT 2025 Slot 2 was rated moderate to difficult based on student feedback and expert analysis. VARC was relatively manageable, DILR included time-consuming sets, and Quantitative Aptitude had calculation-based questions, particularly from Arithmetic and Algebra.

The examination lasted 120 minutes, with 40 minutes allotted to each section. Candidates received 3 marks for each correct answer, while 1 mark was deducted for each incorrect MCQ. There was no negative marking for TITA (Type in the Answer) questions.

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CAT 2025 Slot 2 Important Topics

CAT 2025 Slot 2 included questions from Reading Comprehension, Verbal Ability, Data Interpretation, Logical Reasoning, Arithmetic, Algebra, and Geometry. The following table highlights the important topics covered in each section.

Arithmetic and Algebra were important areas in Quantitative Aptitude. DILR included five sets, making set selection and time management important for scoring well. In VARC, Reading Comprehension formed a major part of the section.

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