Answer Key
UPSC Prelims 2025, GS Paper 1: Answer Key and Subject-Wise Analysis
100 questions, cross-verified against the official UPSC answer key. Conducted 26 May 2025 (Set A, booklet series LVPK-O-PSO/56A).
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 |
|---|---|---|
| Polity | 16 | 16% |
| Science & Technology | 16 | 16% |
| Economy | 15 | 15% |
| Environment | 15 | 15% |
| History | 15 | 15% |
| Geography | 13 | 13% |
| Current Affairs | 9 | 9% |
| Art & Culture | 1 | 1% |
Difficulty breakdown
Easy
17
Medium
56
Hard
27
Free
11
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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.
Q14 · History
Pallavas / South Indian dynasties
Pallava-specific titular trivia. Most aspirants prepare the Pallavas at the level of dynasty founders and Mahabalipuram architecture, very few go deep enough on regnal epithets to recall three at once.
Practise this question →Q18 · Art & Culture
Hindustani music / Modern revival
A pre-Partition city in undivided India, easily mistaken for Mumbai or Pune, where the school later expanded. Niche music-history detail, and this year's entire Art and Culture footprint.
Practise this question →Q21 · Geography
NATO membership / Political geography
A favourite UPSC trick: give five EU-or-EU-adjacent countries and test the EU-versus-NATO distinction. Four of the six are neutral EU members, not NATO members.
Practise this question →Q33 · Science & Technology
Earth sciences / Space weather
A genuinely cross-domain question, pulling from palaeomagnetism, space weather, and Earth science in one frame. Aspirants who memorise within single subjects struggle here.
Practise this question →Q46 · Science & Technology
Defence chemistry / Explosives
Pure defence-chemistry trivia. Almost no standard UPSC reference names these compounds directly, aspirants who follow defence current affairs closely had a real chance.
Practise this question →Q96 · Current Affairs
UN International Years
Off-radar UN observances. Aspirants prepare UN agencies and major summits, but rarely the calendar of designated International Years.
Practise this question →Key takeaways
Polity and Science and Technology are the two subjects to not under-weight. Both landed at 16 questions, the joint-heaviest of the paper. If your weekly study split treats either as secondary to Economy or History, recalibrate.
Build a current affairs habit, not a current affairs cram. Nine questions tested current affairs directly, and several more inside Science and Technology and Economy depended on it to disambiguate a distractor. A monthly compilation will not cover this, a daily habit will.
Do not starve Art and Culture, but do not over-invest in it either. One question this year, but that is exactly the kind of subject where a single well-prepared fact is the difference between a free mark and a guess.
Practise elimination, not just recall. The hard tail is unfamiliar by design. Eliminating one or two distractors with confidence, then guessing intelligently among what is left, beats trying to recall the answer outright.
What to read next
Concepts from this paper that already have a study note behind them.