What a vertical mirror does to letters, numbers, clocks and figures — a small set of fixed rules that turn a guessing game into a checklist. No question from this topic appeared in the papers I could extract or recover, so this chapter is built entirely to the AAI pattern.
A mirror image is not random — it follows one geometric rule applied consistently, and every AAI question in this chapter is really just that one rule dressed differently.
Stand a mirror vertically to the right of an object. The image appears to be the same distance behind the mirror as the object is in front of it, and left and right swap, while up and down stay exactly where they are.
This is the entire chapter. Every specific case — letters, numbers, clocks, figures — is this one fact applied to a different kind of object.
Picture your own reflection. Your right hand's mirror image appears to be a left hand on the other side of the glass, but your head is still at the top. That single image is the whole rule.
Two separate things happen to a word in a mirror: the letters swap their left-right order, and each individual letter is itself flipped left to right.
Do not just reverse the spelling — that only handles the order. Each letter shape must also be flipped individually, and many capital letters change shape when flipped.
These eleven capital letters are symmetric about a vertical axis, so flipping them leaves them looking the same. Every other capital letter changes shape — a mirrored R looks nothing like an R.
Among the single digits, only 0, 1 and 8 look unchanged when flipped. Every other digit changes shape, and multi-digit numbers also reverse their left-right order, exactly like a word.
Learn that string once. Any capital letter not in it will look different in a mirror, and that fact alone answers most letter-based questions without needing to visualise the flip.
What is the mirror image of the word EXAM, written left to right as it would appear in the mirror?
This is the single most frequently asked mirror sub-type, and it reduces to one clean subtraction.
Convert the given time to hours and minutes, subtract from 11 hours 60 minutes, and read off the result. The a.m. or p.m. label never changes and is never asked about.
Using 12:00 directly forces awkward borrowing when the minutes are not zero. Using 11 hours 60 minutes instead makes every subtraction a simple column subtraction with no borrowing at all.
A clock shows 4:20. What time does its mirror image show?
AAI occasionally asks a mirror question using a simple shape or an arrangement of smaller shapes rather than letters. The rule does not change, but a lookalike question type is easy to confuse it with.
A water image is what you see reflected in a still pond — it is the object turned upside down, not left-right reversed. The two are frequently tested side by side specifically to catch the confusion.
A real mirror on a wall is vertical, so it swaps left and right. A pond's surface is horizontal, so it swaps up and down. The orientation of the reflecting surface tells you which pair of directions changes.
Practice covering letters, numbers, clocks, figures and water images, with blank clock faces and mirror lines printed for you to draw on. Print it, solve it, keep it.
Multiple choice questions, building in difficulty. Full solutions are in the downloadable PDF above.
Live classes cover every reasoning, aptitude, English and GK topic straight from the real question papers, with the shortcut for each question type drilled until it is automatic.