Answer Key
UPSC Prelims 2018, GS Paper 1: Answer Key and Subject-Wise Analysis
100 questions, cross-verified against the official UPSC answer key. Conducted 3 June 2018 (Series A, booklet code CYRF-F-TXLI).
Subject distribution
Counted directly from the question bank, not estimated, so these numbers match exactly what you will see if you filter the practice list yourself.
| Subject | Questions | Share |
|---|---|---|
| Economy | 24 | 24% |
| Environment | 14 | 14% |
| History | 14 | 14% |
| Polity | 14 | 14% |
| Science & Technology | 11 | 11% |
| Current Affairs | 10 | 10% |
| Art & Culture | 7 | 7% |
| Geography | 6 | 6% |
Difficulty breakdown
Easy
19
Medium
61
Hard
20
Free
12
free to answer
Member
88
answer gated behind sign-in
Standout questions
These made aspirants pause, either because they were unusually difficult, unusually novel, or because they signal a shift in how UPSC is framing questions.
Q42 · Art & Culture
Kishangarh School of Painting
Art history questions that ask you to name a specific painting school, not just recognise Mughal or Rajput art broadly, reward genuinely granular preparation. Kishangarh is exactly the kind of specific name aspirants skip past when a subject feels already covered.
Practise this question →Q19 · History
Wood's Despatch, 1854
Wood's Despatch, 1854 gets a single-line mention in most timelines, but this question tests what it actually did, laying the foundation of a structured, government-funded education system in India, not just that it happened.
Practise this question →Q28 · Economy
UPI, BHIM and Authentication Factors
A rare technology question that tests genuine understanding of how UPI and BHIM authentication actually differ from card-based PIN systems, rather than treating digital payments as a single interchangeable topic.
Practise this question →Q9 · Economy
FRBM Review Committee: Debt and Borrowing Rules
The FRBM Review Committee's debt and borrowing recommendations are exactly the kind of committee-report detail that ages out of most revision cycles fast, tested here at a level of specificity that rewards reading the actual recommendations, not just knowing the committee existed.
Practise this question →Q43 · Current Affairs
Missile Defence Systems: THAAD
THAAD is a genuinely current-affairs-driven defence topic with no fixed textbook home, the kind of question that only a paper closely tracking that year's actual geopolitical news would include.
Practise this question →Key takeaways
Economy was the heaviest subject by a wide margin, 24 of 100 questions, roughly a quarter of the paper, echoing the same Economy-heavy pattern seen in 2019 and 2020. Depth in banking, fiscal policy and economic institutions consistently pays off across these years.
Current Affairs carried 10 questions this year, its highest share of any year analysed so far, reflecting a paper genuinely tracking that year's live geopolitical and policy news (Yemen and South Sudan famine, THAAD, the Israel-Palestine two-state debate) rather than only static syllabus facts.
Art and Culture reached 7 questions this year, well above its usual 1-4 range in every other year analysed, a reminder that this subject's weight swings meaningfully year to year and is never safe to deprioritise entirely.
This is the first year in the bank sourced directly from upsc.gov.in's own archived files (via the Wayback Machine) rather than a coaching-site mirror, the highest-confidence source used so far, worth remembering as a first port of call for any future year.
What to read next
Concepts from this paper that already have a study note behind them.