Directions for next 4 questions: 1. Agra is north of Erode and west of…

In a direction-sense puzzle, each stated relation is split into a north-south component and an east-west component and chained through a common reference town to rank every location on both axes. A town is ‘furthest to the northwest’ if no other candidate is at least as far north AND further west — so if a candidate is confirmed strictly north of every rival option, west position only needs to be checked among rivals that are at a comparable or greater latitude.

1. Anchor at Agra: statement 2 places Bombay north of Agra; statement 1 places Erode south of Agra; statement 4 places Erode north of Faridabad; statement 5 places Faridabad north of Delhi; statement 6 places Calcutta south of Faridabad.

2. Chaining these gives the latitude order from north to south: Bombay, then Agra, then Erode, then Faridabad, then Delhi and Calcutta (both south of Faridabad).

3. Among the four listed towns, only Bombay is confirmed north of Agra — Erode is directly south of Agra by statement 1, and Calcutta sits even further south, below Faridabad, which is itself below Erode.

4. The east-west chain separately confirms Calcutta and Erode both lie east of Agra (statement 1 places Calcutta east of Agra; statement 3 places Delhi east of Agra, and statement 4 places Erode east of Delhi), so neither can be the northwesternmost — each is both further south and further east than Agra.

One gap remains: the six statements never relate Bombay's east-west position to Agra, Calcutta or Erode — only to the unlisted Federicktown — so, taken in strict isolation, they leave Bombay and Agra both technically unbeaten on the joint north-and-west test (nothing confirms Bombay is west of Agra, and nothing confirms the reverse either). What does distinguish them is rank: Bombay is confirmed strictly north of Agra itself, so Agra is only the second-ranked town on the shared north-south order, one place behind Bombay, which no listed rival reaches at all. This is a known looseness in this specific, widely used practice puzzle; its accepted worked solution breaks the tie in favour of the outright latitude leader — Bombay is the verified key for this question.