Ram, Sheela, Karim and Raju are playing a carrom board game. Ram and Karim are…

Concept

• In a four-player board game the players occupy the four edges of the square board and every player looks across the centre. A seat and a facing are therefore exact opposites: whoever sits on the West edge looks East, and whoever sits on the North edge looks South.

• Partners sit across the board from one another. So a pair of partners occupies one full axis of the board, and their facings are opposite to each other as well.

• Left and right are always read from the seated person’s own point of view, never from the reader’s. For a person looking East the right hand points South and the left hand points North; turn the facing and that pair of side directions turns with it.

Applying it here

1. Karim looks East. By the seat–facing rule he must be sitting on the West edge of the board.

2. Ram is Karim’s partner, so Ram sits across from him on the East edge and looks West. The East–West axis is now filled.

3. Because Karim looks East, Karim’s own right hand points South. Raju sits to Karim’s right, so Raju is on the South edge.

4. Raju, on the South edge, looks across the centre and therefore faces North.

5. Sheela is Raju’s partner, so she sits across from Raju — on the North edge. That fills the remaining axis.

6. Sheela, on the North edge, looks across the centre and therefore faces South.

Cross-check

Every edge is used exactly once and each partner pair sits on one axis, so the arrangement is fully determined by the two facts given (Karim’s facing and Raju’s position relative to him):

• The step that decides the whole answer is the side mapping in step 3. Facing East, a person’s right hand points South, not North — stand and look toward the sunrise and your right arm swings toward the South. Reading Karim’s right as the North edge inverts that mapping and flips the final facing to its opposite.

• The question does supply everything needed. Both partner pairs are given, so once Karim’s facing fixes Raju’s edge, the Sheela–Raju pairing forces Sheela’s seat, and the look-across-the-centre rule then forces her facing. Drop either pairing and Sheela could sit on two different edges, so the pairings are what make the answer unique.

Result: Sheela is looking toward South.