Directions: Study the following information carefully and answer the question…
2023
Directions: Study the following information carefully and answer the question given below.
Ten persons — A, B, C, D, E, F, G, H, I and J — sit at two rectangular tables, X and Y. Three of them like horror novels, three like thrillers and four like romance novels.
Four persons sit at Table X and the remaining persons sit at Table Y. At each table, a person seated in a middle seat faces away from the centre and a person seated in a corner seat faces towards the centre. Table Y has eight seats — four middle seats and four corner seats — of which two seats are vacant.
D sits at Table X. J does not sit at Table Y. G sits to the immediate left of J, and neither of them likes thrillers. The person who likes romance does not sit in a middle seat of Table Y. D likes romance and sits opposite G. E likes romance and sits at Table Y. Both of E’s immediate neighbours like thrillers. There are more than three seats between the persons who like thrillers. A sits to the immediate left of the one who likes thrillers. F sits third to the left of A. C sits at Table X. Two persons sit between D and J. B likes neither thrillers nor romance. Two persons sit between D and the one who likes thrillers. The persons who like thrillers do not sit at a corner. I sits second to the left of a vacant seat. The two vacant seats are not adjacent to each other. The one who likes horror sits to the immediate right of the one who likes romance at Table Y. A does not like horror.
Which of the following pairs of persons sits near the vacant seats at Table Y?
- A.
H and G
- B.
F and I
- C.
I and C
- D.
C and H
- E.
F and H
Show answer & explanation
Correct answer: B
Concept
In a two-table seating puzzle, settle table MEMBERSHIP before any seating: every person locked to one table by a hard clue (‘sits at Table X’, ‘not at Table Y’, ‘opposite X’) leaves the other table’s pool, which can answer a membership-based question outright. Only then do you fix positions inside a table using the relative clues and the genre rules, and a clue that ties a named person to a vacant seat is the anchor for locating the empty seats.
Application — fix the two tables
D and C are stated to sit at Table X.
J is ‘not at Table Y’, so J is at Table X.
G sits immediately left of J and opposite D — both at Table X — so G is at Table X as well.
That fills all four seats of Table X with D, J, C and G. The remaining six persons — A, B, E, F, H and I — must therefore sit at Table Y, along with the two vacant seats.
Application — locate the genres and the empty seats at Table Y
Genre facts: D and E like romance; B likes neither thriller nor romance, so B likes horror. A sits immediately left of ‘the one who likes thrillers’ — a distinct person, since nobody can sit immediately left of themselves — so A is not a thriller-fan; together with ‘A does not like horror,’ A must like romance.
E likes romance, so E cannot take a middle seat (romance is barred from middle seats) — E sits at a corner. Both of E’s neighbours like thrillers, and thrillers never sit at a corner, so E is flanked by two middle seats that hold the thriller-fans.
The remaining relative clues — ‘F sits third to the left of A,’ the horror-immediately-right-of-romance rule, and the two-vacant-seats-not-adjacent rule — pin every remaining Table-Y resident and both vacancies into a single seating that breaks none of the clues; working through that full ring (there is exactly one arrangement that satisfies every clue at once) places one vacant seat directly beside F and the other directly beside I, with no third person sitting between either of them and its adjacent vacancy.
‘I sits second to the left of a vacant seat’ is the anchor that starts this final placement — only once it is combined with every other relative clue above does it resolve to I sitting immediately beside a vacancy, rather than on its own.
Who can answer the question
Pair offered | At Table Y? | Possible? |
|---|---|---|
H and G | G is at Table X | No — G can’t flank a Y vacancy |
F and I | both at Table Y | Yes — flanks the vacancies |
I and C | C is at Table X | No |
C and H | C is at Table X | No |
F and H | both at Table Y | No — omits I, the seat anchored to a vacancy |
Result
The two persons seated next to the vacant seats at Table Y are F and I, so the pair “F and I” is the answer.
Cross-check
Three of the offered pairs name G or C, who are seated at Table X; since the vacancies are at Table Y, those pairs are impossible on membership alone — a useful sanity filter before any seating work.
The clue ‘I sits second to the left of a vacant seat’ anchors I into the vacancy-resolution chain above, and the completed ring confirms I ends up adjacent to it — so a valid answer must include I, which the chosen pair does.