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?
Answer: D. SV — 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…
- A.
QT
- B.
RP
- C.
VS
- D.
SV
Attempted by 71 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:
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.
Clue (ii), first part — "R is next to the left of U" — places R immediately to U's left, at seat 2.
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).
Clue (iv) — "Q is between S and T" — means S, Q and T occupy three mutually consecutive seats, with Q in the middle.
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.
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).
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.
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.