Direction : Study the following information carefully and answer the questions…

Concept

In this input–output machine, Step II encodes each word as a two-letter code followed by a single digit. The digit is derived from the word's letter count by a fixed parity rule: if the word's length is EVEN, the digit is (length + 1); if the length is ODD, the digit is (length − 1). The codes in Step II keep the same left-to-right order as the words in the phrase.

Deriving the rule from the worked example

Check the rule on the solved row ‘divert metro work traffic’, whose Step II is ve7, om4, or5, ct6:

• divert has 6 letters (even) → 6 + 1 = 7

• metro has 5 letters (odd) → 5 − 1 = 4

• work has 4 letters (even) → 4 + 1 = 5

• traffic has 7 letters (odd) → 7 − 1 = 6

The same even → +1 / odd → −1 rule reproduces every digit in all three solved rows, so it is the governing rule.

Applying it to ‘recover that device issue’

1. recover → 7 letters (odd) → 7 − 1 = 6 (1st element)

2. that → 4 letters (even) → 4 + 1 = 5 (2nd element)

3. device → 6 letters (even) → 6 + 1 = 7 (3rd element)

4. issue → 5 letters (odd) → 5 − 1 = 4 (4th element)

So the Step II digits, in order, are 6, 5, 7, 4. The 2nd element carries the digit 5 and the 4th element carries the digit 4.

Result

Sum of the 2nd and 4th digits = 5 + 4 = 9.

Cross-check

Re-deriving each digit's parity independently confirms the count: the only even-length words (that, device) gain +1 while the odd-length words (recover, issue) lose 1, giving 6, 5, 7, 4 — consistent with the example rows. Hence the required sum is 9.