Blood Relations & Directions: Draw It, Don't Think It
A step-by-step visual method to crack RRB NTPC family-tree and direction-sense questions in under 40 seconds each, with worked examples, symbols, shortcuts, and a common-trap warning.
By the PadhoDost Team · 📖 8 min read · Updated 4 August 2026
Part of Railway Exams (RRB) prep🧠 Two puzzles, one skill: never lose your place
Picture a big family wedding. Someone points across the hall and says, 'That uncle is my mother's brother's father-in-law.' Try to hold it all in your head and you get dizzy. But draw it on a napkin and it becomes obvious. Direction problems are the same, na? You would never find a shop in a new city by memorising 'left, right, straight' in your head. You draw a rough map. Blood Relations and Directions are twins: both are solved not by thinking harder, but by DRAWING. Aaj hum yahi seekhenge, dost.
In the RRB NTPC CBT-1 you get 100 questions in 90 minutes. Reasoning has 30 questions, and Blood Relations plus Directions together usually give 3 to 6 easy marks. These are 'banked' marks: draw properly and you almost never get them wrong. With +1 for a correct answer and -1/3 for a wrong one, safe marks like these are gold. The goal is simple: solve each one in under 40 seconds, on paper, with zero guessing.
Part 1: Blood Relations
A blood-relation question describes a family and asks how two people are related. The single biggest mistake students make is solving it in their head. Don't. Draw a family tree with fixed symbols so your brain does less work.
| Symbol | Meaning | How to use it |
|---|---|---|
| + (plus) | Male | Mark the name with a (+) |
| - (minus) | Female | Mark the name with a (-) |
| Horizontal line —— | Husband & wife | Join the two names side by side |
| Vertical / slant line | Parent to child | Put the child BELOW the parent |
| Double line == | Brother / sister | Join two names on the SAME row |
The 3-step method for any relation problem
- 1Break the sentence into small pieces and read left to right. Take ONE relationship at a time, never the whole line at once.
- 2Draw each piece on the tree immediately. Same generation goes side by side; the next generation goes one row below.
- 3Read the final relation straight off your diagram, top to bottom. Don't re-read the sentence.
📝 Worked example: coded relations
Question: If A + B means A is the father of B, A - B means A is the mother of B, and A × B means A is the brother of B, then how is P related to R in: P + Q × R?
Step 1 — take the first piece: P + Q means P is the father of Q. Draw P (+) on top, Q below.
Step 2 — next piece: Q × R means Q is the brother of R. So R sits on the SAME row as Q, joined by ==.
Step 3 — read the tree: P is the parent (father) of Q, and R is Q's sibling, so P is the parent of R too.
Answer: P is the FATHER of R.
📝 Worked example: the pointing-to-a-photo type
Question: Pointing to a photo, a man says, 'She is the daughter of my grandfather's only son.'
Start from the far end: 'my grandfather's only son'. The grandfather's only son is the man's OWN father.
Now: 'the daughter of my father'. A daughter of your father is your sister. (Here it must be a sister, because the man himself is male and cannot be a 'daughter'.)
Answer: She is his SISTER.
Shortcut: always solve these from the LAST word backwards toward 'my'.
Part 2: Direction Sense
Here a person walks in different directions and you must find the final direction or the shortest distance from the start. Never track it in your head. Draw a + shaped compass at the starting point: North up, South down, East right, West left. Then draw every move as an arrow.
📝 Worked example: find the distance from start
Question: A man walks 5 km North, turns right and walks 3 km, turns right and walks 5 km. How far is he from the start?
Draw it: 5 North (up). First right turn from North faces East, so 3 East (right). Second right turn from East faces South, so 5 South (down).
Cancel opposite moves: 5 North and 5 South cancel out completely (0 vertical).
What remains: only 3 km East. There is no vertical part, so no Pythagoras needed.
Answer: He is 3 km EAST of the start.
Quick revision before the exam
- ✓Blood relations: always draw a tree; take one relation at a time; read the answer off the diagram.
- ✓Never assume gender — 'brother/child of' can be either boy or girl unless stated.
- ✓Solve 'pointing to a photo' sentences backwards, from the last phrase toward 'my'.
- ✓Directions: draw a compass, turn arrows into a map, cancel opposite distances.
- ✓Right = clockwise, Left = anti-clockwise; use Pythagoras only when both a horizontal and a vertical part remain.
- ✓Both topics are fast, high-accuracy marks — don't skip them, but don't over-think them either.
⚡ Quick check
A woman introduces a boy as the son of the daughter of her father. How is the woman related to the boy?
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