Puzzles
About 7 min · General Intelligence and Reasoning · English
Time worked out from the lesson's 575 words at 150 words a minute, plus a minute for each question.
These questions test your ability to organize complex information systematically and draw logical conclusions from multiple overlapping constraints. The three main puzzle types—box-based, floor-based, and scheduling puzzles—share a common solving framework: extract data points, identify constraints, and use elimination logic.
Key ideas
- Information Extraction: Every puzzle provides direct facts (X is in Box 3) and indirect constraints (Y is not adjacent to Z). Your first task is to separate these into two categories and note them clearly.
- Tabular Representation: Always draw a table or grid before attempting to solve. For floor-based puzzles, create a vertical column with floors numbered bottom-to-top. For box-based puzzles, draw horizontal boxes. For scheduling, use a day-wise or time-slot table.
- Constraint Types: Constraints can be definite (A lives on floor 4), relative (B lives above C), negative (D does not work on Monday), or conditional (If E is in box 2, then F is in box 5). Process definite constraints first.
- Elimination Logic: When direct placement isn't possible, use elimination. If five people occupy five floors and three positions are known, the remaining two can only fit in the two empty slots—test both possibilities.
- Common Patterns: Watch for "adjacent" relationships (floor-based), "between" placements (box-based), and "not on consecutive days" patterns (scheduling). These create chains of dependencies.
Watch out for
- Mixing "immediately" with general positional words → "A is above B" allows any floor gap, but "A is immediately above B" means adjacent floors only. Students often treat them as identical. Fix: Underline "immediately" and draw adjacent boxes/floors.
- Ignoring negative constraints until the end → Processing "X is not in position 2" late can lead to wrong trial placements. Fix: List all negative constraints separately and check each placement against them immediately.
- Bottom-up vs. top-down confusion in floors → Many students number floors top-to-bottom. Fix: Always write Floor 1 at the bottom of your column, like a real building.
Quick reference
- Draw your table FIRST: floor column, box row, or day row—always before reading constraints.
- Process constraints in order: definite facts → relative positions → negative constraints → conditionals.
- Floor 1 = bottom; boxes numbered left-to-right; days follow calendar order.
- "Immediately" = adjacent; plain "above/before" = anywhere in that direction.
- "Between X and Y" = anywhere between them, with or without gaps; "immediately between" = no gaps.
Check yourself: 3 questions
1. Four persons—A, B, C and D—have meetings scheduled on four different days of the same week from Monday to Thursday, but not necessarily in the same order. B has a meeting immediately after C. A's meeting is scheduled before D's meeting. D's meeting is not on Thursday. On which day is A's meeting scheduled?
2. Seven people—P, Q, R, S, T, U and V—work in seven different departments of a company. Each department is on a different floor numbered 1 to 7 from bottom to top. R works on the fourth floor. There are two floors between the floors on which P and Q work. U works on an odd-numbered floor above Q. S works immediately below V. T does not work on the topmost floor. P works on a floor below Q. How many floors are there between the floors on which T and S work?
3. A, B, C, D, E, and F are six friends. A is taller than B but shorter than C. D is the tallest. E is shorter than F but taller than B. C is shorter than F. Who is the second tallest among them?
This lesson is cut from the topic's note, not rewritten. Fact-checked on 18 Oct 2026: an AI-assisted check of this note against cited sources; the errors it found were corrected that day. Some errors may remain. The questions are from Shishya's validated question bank.
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