Sherlocking-Preview!

"When you have eliminated all which is impossible, then whatever remains, however improbable, must be the truth.” ~ Arthur Conan Doyle, The Case-Book of Sherlock Holmes.

All of us know Sherlock holmes as the detective who used his deductive reasoning skills to solve complicated, albeit sometimes uncrackable cases. The modus operandi was simple. You break the existing dogmas. Focus on the facts at hand. Keep your eyes, ears and most importantly your mind open. And back common sense over the background noise, veiled as a fancy facade, generated by people with vested interests.

I've used this skill to my advantage in the past two years consciously and even before that (subconsciously so) that has improved not only my understanding of the exam, but my performance on the ground. Previously, I failed in Prelims by 20ish marks in 2018, cleared Prelims marginally in 2019 and then again failed to conquer the dreaded monster in 2020. It was then that I realised that there was a need to start afresh.

Sherlocking as a technique has two aspects.

One is with regard to the planning related to preparation based on syllabus and previous year questions. For this, just go back to PYQs and observe if you see a pattern. For instance, a cursory overview of GS1 from 2013-22 would show you that Bhakti movement is an oft repeated theme in the exam. Now you use this observation to prepare quality points beforehand so that one, you take an edge in terms of the quality of the answer you deliver and two, you save time on trying to create points in the exam hall.

Another is in context of optimising performance in the examination hall. You keep your senses open in the exam hall to process any piece of information that you could find your hands on. The most prominent example I could think of, is from Prelims 2019. There was a question on finding the option that was not an IVC site out of the given choices. Two were well know options(Chanhundaro, Kot Diji), another two(Sohgaura and Desalpur) were unconventional. But the immediate next question was on Ashoka's inscription site which had Sohgaura as one of the options. I took the leap of faith with the deduction that there's a low possibility of a single site to be known for multiple reasons because if it were to be the case, it would no longer have been an obscure site. Ended up with +2.

This brings me to my initial point. Sherlocking or in simple words, the art of being observant and using that observation to your advantage, is worth its weight in gold. There are three pieces of the puzzle that need to fall into place for you to find your name in the Holy PDF. The first is the quality of preparation, that happens before hand. Second is the quality of translation of that preparation on the examination day, inside the examination hall. And the third one is the push of fate, which even if were not to work in your favour, shouldn't work against you. Sherlocking aids your cause in the first two endeavours.

I'm sure this was an appetizing introduction. I'm planning to come up with a video series soon that tackles Prelims PYQs using this concept. Hopefully this will help you prepare better for Prelims.
Until next time.