NCERT Solutions Poorvi Chapter 3 The Case of the Fifth Word — Let us explore

Book page 121 Updated on2026-09-05

Q1.

Work in pairs. Read the words and observe the images given below. Check if your answers match. Share your answers with your classmates and teacher. [Six images: 1. the word ‘teach’ 2. the word ‘hate’ 3. the word ‘good’ 4. a tree with birds 5. a black-and-white shape 6. white pillars against black shapes] These are optical illusions which may trick the eye and make you think that you can see two different things.

Answer

The six pictures use two different tricks. Pictures 1–3 are ambigrams — words drawn so that they read as a second word when you turn the page upside down. Pictures 4–6 are figure-and-ground illusions — the eye cannot decide which part is the object and which is the background, so it flips between two pictures.

No.	What you see first	The second thing	Kind of illusion
1	the word teach	turn it upside down and it reads learn	Ambigram — and a pair of opposites
2	the word hate	turned round, it reads love	Ambigram
3	the word good	turned round, it reads evil	Ambigram
4	a leafy tree with two birds flying above it	stare at the twisted trunk and the white gaps between the branches, and a face (or a pair of faces) appears in them	Hidden figure in the negative space
5	a penguin, facing left	look only at the white part and it becomes a man's head in profile, with an eye and a long nose	Figure and ground
6	a row of white stone pillars	look at the black shapes between them and they become people standing face to face	Figure and ground (the same trick as Rubin's vase)

Why the eye is fooled: your brain must decide which part of a picture is the figure (the thing) and which is the ground (the empty space behind it). Normally the choice is obvious. These pictures are drawn so that both choices work — so the brain keeps switching, and you seem to see two things in one place. It cannot show you both at once.

Link to the lesson: this is exactly what happens with Nom Utes Sweden Hurts. Mrs. Brown sees four ordinary words — the ‘figure' — and cannot see the days of the week hidden behind them. Leroy simply switches which part he is looking at.

Q2.

Read the steps to play a language game—Name the Mystery Object. 1. Divide the class into teams. 2. Each team chooses an object and prepares three hints to enable the other teams to name the object. 3. Each team takes turns to name the object given by the other team. 4. If a team names the object with the first hint, they get 20 points, with the second hint 10 points, and with the third hint 5 points. One example with three hints: (i) I display information for all to share, with a swipe I’m clean and bare. (ii) I am rectangular or a square, whom neither teacher nor student can spare. (iii) I am mostly black, sometimes green, now in white too I am seen.

Answer

The object in the example is the blackboard (or whiteboard). Notice how the hints are ordered — hint (i) is the hardest and could be several things; hint (iii) all but names it. That is what the scoring rewards.

How to write good hints:

Hint 1 — function. What does the object do? Keep it wide: “I display information for all to share.”
Hint 2 — shape, size or place. Narrow the field: “rectangular or a square… neither teacher nor student can spare.”
Hint 3 — a giveaway detail. Colour, material or a familiar habit: “mostly black, sometimes green, now in white too.”

Never begin with the giveaway, and never use the object's name or an obvious part of it inside a hint.

Sample answers you can use

Umbrella — (i) I open my arms when the sky is unkind. (ii) I have ribs but no bones, and a handle to hold. (iii) I drip in the corner till the sun comes back.

Clock — (i) I have a face and two hands, but I never wave. (ii) I go round and round and never leave the wall. (iii) I speak once an hour and everybody obeys me.

Dictionary — (i) I hold thousands of words and mean nothing by any of them. (ii) I begin at A and I end at Z. (iii) You open me when you meet a stranger on a page.

Q3.

Visit the library and look for an encyclopedia. What is it? Check how it is different from a dictionary. Share your answers with your classmates and teacher.

Answer

An encyclopedia is a book — or, more often, a set of books — that gives detailed information about subjects, people, places and events, arranged alphabetically (or by theme) and usually with maps, photographs and diagrams. The story defines it exactly: “a book or set of books filled with facts from A to Z.”

	Dictionary	Encyclopedia
Answers the question	What does this word mean?	What do we know about this thing?
Contains	Meaning, spelling, pronunciation, part of speech, origin, example sentence	Articles: history, description, causes, importance, related topics
Entry length	A few lines	A paragraph to many pages
Entry for ‘Sundarbans'	Would probably not list it at all	Location, area, delta, mangroves, sundari trees, Bengal tiger, UNESCO status
Includes	All kinds of words — and, quickly, beautiful	Mostly nouns — people, places, events, ideas
Pictures	Rarely	Usually — maps, charts, photographs

Check it yourself: look up the word crater in a dictionary and then in an encyclopedia. The dictionary will tell you it is a bowl-shaped hollow; the encyclopedia will tell you how meteorite craters form, and will very likely mention Lonar. Two books, two different jobs.

And a third kind of book — a thesaurus — answers yet another question: what is another word for this? Knowing which of the three to reach for is itself a research skill.

Q4.

A thesaurus is a reference book or digital tool that provides a collection of words with similar meanings, allowing users to find alternative words or phrases to express the same idea. Choose any five words and find out their alternative words from the thesaurus.

Answer

Choose words you actually overuse in your own writing — said, good, big, walk, happy — because those are where a thesaurus pays.

Word	Alternatives	The shade of difference
said	announced, replied, confessed, urged, exclaimed, stated	The story uses five of these on one page — “I can't figure it out,” she confessed tells you she is admitting defeat, which ‘said' would not.
mysterious	puzzling, baffling, enigmatic, mystifying, inexplicable	Enigmatic suggests a riddle with an answer; inexplicable suggests there is none.
huge	colossal, gigantic, immense, vast, whopping	Whopping is informal and a little comic — the unit uses it for the 175-foot root bridge.
calm	serene, tranquil, peaceful, still, composed	Serene describes a place or a face; composed describes a person under pressure.
clever	sharp, quick-witted, shrewd, ingenious, resourceful	Ingenious praises the idea; shrewd praises the judgement of people.

The rule for using a thesaurus: synonyms are near-matches, never exact ones. Always check the new word in a dictionary and read your sentence aloud with it in place. Swapping ‘said' for ‘vociferated' does not make writing better — it makes it strange. Choose the word that carries the extra shade of meaning you actually want.

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