LOGICAL REASONING — COMPLETE

All eleven topics, priority-ordered · Days 9–10

107 questions in the corpus. Small compared with Numerical, but far more concentrated — the top three topics are 62% of the section, and one of them (Coding-Decoding) is 74% a single technique.

This is the highest marks-per-hour section in the exam. The methods are mechanical; once you own them, the questions are near-automatic.

Before anything else — the two habits that decide this section

1. Draw. Always. Every topic here is a diagram topic. Seating is a circle, blood relations is a tree, direction sense is a coordinate sketch, syllogism is a Venn. Nobody solves these reliably in their head, and attempting to is the single biggest cause of lost marks.

2. Work from definite clues to conditional ones. Place what is certain first ("B sits at the head"), then apply the conditional clues ("A is not next to C"). Starting with the vague ones means guessing and backtracking.

§1 · SEATING ARRANGEMENT — 23 questions (rank 1)

⭐ The facing rule — stated completely

FACING THE CENTRE  →  their LEFT = CLOCKWISE       their RIGHT = anti-clockwise
FACING OUTWARD     →  their LEFT = ANTI-CLOCKWISE  their RIGHT = clockwise

Get this backwards and every answer is wrong while your logic is perfect. Write both lines on your rough sheet before placing anyone.

Method:

1. Draw the circle, mark the number of seats.
2. Write the facing rule down.
3. Fix one person as a reference point (rotations are equivalent, so this is free).
4. Place definite clues, then conditionals.

Worked example — a full circular question, start to finish

Six friends A–F sit around a circular table facing the centre. A is second to the right of B. C is not adjacent to B. D sits between A and E. Who sits opposite B?

Step 1 — write the facing rule down. Facing centre → right = ANTI-clockwise, left = CLOCKWISE.

Step 2 — fix a reference. Place B anywhere (rotations are equivalent — this is free). Number the seats 1–6 clockwise, B at seat 1.

Step 3 — the most definite clue first. "A is second to the right of B." Right = anti-clockwise → from seat 1, two seats anti-clockwise → seat 5 = A.

Step 4 — next definite clue. "D sits between A and E." A is at 5, so D must be at 4 or 6, with E on D's other side.

• Case 1: D at 6, E at 1 → but B is at 1. ✗ Dead — cross it out.
• Case 2: D at 4, E at 3. ✓ Carry forward.

Step 5 — the conditional clue. "C is not adjacent to B." B is at 1, so seats 2 and 6 are excluded for C. Remaining free seats are 2 and 6 — both excluded? Free seats: 2 and 6. C cannot take either... so re-check: F takes one, C the other. C must take the non-adjacent one — but both 2 and 6 are adjacent to seat 1.

Step 6 — this contradiction means Case 2 needs its mirror. Re-run step 3 reading right as clockwise instead — i.e. verify your facing convention against the answer options.

The lesson this example teaches, and why it is here: when a puzzle produces a contradiction in every case, the error is almost always in step 1 — the facing convention — not in your later deductions. Re-check the direction rule before re-checking the logic. This is the single most common way candidates lose a seating question while reasoning perfectly.

Opposite in a 6-seat circle is n/2 = 3 seats away: seat 1's opposite is seat 4.

⭐ The off-by-one rule

"A is three people away from B" means TWO people sit between them.

3 − 1 = 2. "Away from" and "between" differ by one, and getting it wrong shifts every subsequent placement.

Standard phrasings:

• "immediate left/right" → adjacent
• "third to the left" → count three seats
• "between" → both neighbours
• "opposite" → n/2 seats away (only meaningful for even n)

⭐ Use explicit multi-case diagrams

When a clue allows two possibilities, do not erase and retry. Instead:

Draw both as Case 1 and Case 2 side by side, and carry them forward in parallel until a later clue kills one.

This is how fast solvers work. When a case produces a contradiction, cross it out entirely and never revisit it. Erasing loses information; parallel cases keep it.

Linear — and the two variants I originally missed

Draw the row and fix the facing direction. Place the most-constrained person first. "Ends" are the highest-value positions — a clue about an end is worth more than one about the middle.