Logical Reasoning can get really tricky at times. One of our students sent this set to me and asked me to solve it or describe how I would approach a set like this. These sets are typically lengthy as they have a lot of data points and there is no fixed way of approaching these questions. It is obvious that one must start with the parameter with maximum information. Lets go to this set and see if we can crack it without spending a lot of time. (Source of data set: NIFT 2003. Shared by a student)

Information:

Six persons A, B, C, D, E and F are sitting around a round table facing towards the centre of the table in a restaurant. They have ordered for different items (Pizza, Strawberry, Vanilla, Burger, Pastries and Patties) as their lunch. They are wearing T-shirts of different colors, i.e. white, black, green, red, yellow and blue. Order of items for the lunch and colors of T-shirts are not necessarily to the order of their names.

1. The persons who have ordered for Pizza, Vanilla and Pastries are neither in white T-shirt not in black.
2. The persons who are in green and yellow T-shirts have neither ordered for Pizza not for Vanilla.
3. A is neither in white T-shirt nor on the immediate left of the person who has ordered for Burger.
4. The only person who is between E and F eats Strawberry. The person who is on the left side of the person in white T-shirt does not eat Patties.
5. D has ordered for Burger and the color of this T-shirt is green. He is facing the person who has ordered for Strawberry.
6. One who has ordered for Pizza is seated opposite to the person wearing blue T-shirt, while the person whose T-shirt is of green color is on the left of the person who has ordered for Pastries.
7. One who has ordered for Patties is on the immediate right of the person in white T-shirt but on the immediate left of the person who has ordered for Vanilla.
8. C has not ordered for Vanilla while F has not ordered for Pizza.

Questions:

1. Who among the following is in white T-shirt?
(a) A (b) B (c) C (d) E

2. The only person who is between E and D is wearing T-shirt of the color?
(a) Red (b) Blue (c) Black (d) Yellow

3. Who among the following has ordered for Pastries?
(a) A (b) B (c) C (d) E

4. Which of the following is correctly matched?
(a) A – Yellow – Burger (b) B – Red – Vanilla (c) E – Red – Pizza (d) F – Black – Pastries

Approach:

In such cases, you should start with any of the two data points. So either start with Food-Color or Food-Person or Person-Color. Since D – Burger – Green is given as information in point 5, the problem is now to work on the remaining 5. One can start with a grid like this and start putting information from point 1, 2, 8

From ‘One who has ordered for Pizza is seated opposite to the person wearing blue T-shirt’, one can conclude that pizza person is not blue. From ‘One who has ordered for Patties is on the immediate right of the person in white T-shirt’, one can conclude that the patties person is not white. From ‘The only person who is between E and F eats Strawberry’, one can conclude that E and F don’t eat strawberry.

While working with tick and cross method, one should remember that when you get one blank place with no possibility of tick, it has to be a tick.

“Once you eliminate the impossible, whatever remains, no matter how improbable, must be the truth.” – Arthur Conan Doyle.

Suddenly, your half blank table will now look like this. Don’t forget to get rid of points that are no longer of use to you!

Now to work on the remaining pieces, move to circular arrangement. Fix D first as we have complete information regarding D. From point 3 and point 6, we can conclude that A sits to the right of D and has ordered for Pastries. Incorporate this data in the table as well. Move to point 7, which will give you position of Patties and Vanilla.

Adding Point 4 and 6 will give you:

You can now answer the questions. If there are 5 questions below such set, one should definitely go for it and solve. Also, why you should attempt a question like this in the first place is because all the questions have definite answer options and there are no options such as ‘Data insufficient’ or ‘None of these’. Also, none of the questions are condition based which reduces your efforts in drafting multiple scenarios.

I hope you found this post useful and let us know if you need any help in your preparation. Send us your queries and suggestions. All the best!