Read the following information carefully and answer the question given below:…

2025

Read the following information carefully and answer the question given below:
i. P, Q, R, S, T, U and V are sitting around a circular table facing the centre.
ii. R is next to the left of U and V is second to the left of R.
iii. P is sitting third to the left of T.
iv. Q is between S and T.
Which of the following pairs has the first person sitting to the immediate left of the second person?

  1. A.

    QT

  2. B.

    RP

  3. C.

    VS

  4. D.

    SV

Attempted by 2 students.

Show answer & explanation

Correct answer: D

Concept: In a circular-seating problem, each clue about direction — immediate left/right, "n-th to the left", or "between" — fixes one person's seat relative to another already-placed person. Chaining the clues from a single reference seat builds the full circular order, after which any two people's left-right adjacency can be read directly off that order.

Application:

  1. Fix U's seat as the reference point — seat 1 (seats are numbered 1 to 7 around the table, wrapping from 7 back to 1) — since clue (ii) ties both R and V to U.

  2. Clue (ii), first part — "R is next to the left of U" — places R immediately to U's left, at seat 2.

  3. Clue (ii), second part — "V is second to the left of R" — places V two seats further left of R, at seat 4 (three seats left of U).

  4. Clue (iv) — "Q is between S and T" — means S, Q and T occupy three mutually consecutive seats, with Q in the middle.

  5. Among the seats left over after placing U, R and V (seats 3, 5, 6 and 7), the only run of three consecutive seats available for this S-Q-T block is seats 5, 6 and 7 — so S, Q and T occupy exactly those three seats, in one of two possible orders, with Q always in the middle.

  6. Clue (iii) — "P is sitting third to the left of T" — with only seat 3 left over for P, this pins down T's own seat: three seats to the left of T must land on seat 3, which forces T to seat 7 (stepping left three times from seat 7 wraps past seat 7 back to seat 1, then seat 2, landing on seat 3).

  7. That fixes the S-Q-T block as S = 5, Q = 6, T = 7 (the only order consistent with T = 7), giving the complete circular order, reading leftward all the way round: U (seat 1), R (seat 2), P (seat 3), V (seat 4), S (seat 5), Q (seat 6), T (seat 7), and back to U.

Seating arrangement diagram (for reference)

Seat (going left to right)

Person

1

U

2

R

3

P

4

V

5

S

6

Q

7

T

Cross-check:

  • R immediately left of U — confirmed; R (seat 2) sits directly before U (seat 1) in the order.

  • V two seats left of R — confirmed; stepping left twice from R (seat 2) lands on V (seat 4).

  • P three seats left of T — confirmed; stepping left from T (seat 7) through seats 1 and 2 reaches P (seat 3) in exactly three steps.

  • Q between S and T — confirmed; S (seat 5), Q (seat 6) and T (seat 7) are three consecutive seats with Q in the middle.

Answer: Reading the fixed order, S sits immediately to the left of V — so the pair “S, V” is the one where the first named person sits immediately to the left of the second.

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