LR - Puzzles - Previous Year CAT/MBA Questions

Answer the next 6 questions based on the information given 

Amudha, Bharatan, Chandran, Dhinesh, Ezhil, Fani and Gowtham are seven people in a town. Any pair of them could either be strangers, acquaintances, or friends. All  relationships are mutual. For example, if Amudha is a friend of Bharatan, then Bharatan is also a friend of Amudha. Similarly, if Amudha is a stranger to Bharatan, then Bharatan is also a stranger to Amudha.

Partial information about the number of friends, acquaintances, and strangers of each of these people among them is given in the table below.

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The following additional facts are also known.

1. Amudha, Bharatan, and Chandran are mutual strangers.
2. Amudha, Dhinesh, and Fani are Ezil's friends.
3. Chandran and Gowtham are friends.
4. Every friend of Amudha is an acquaintance of Bharatan, and every acquaintance of Bharatan is a friend of Amudha.
5. Every friend of Bharatan is an acquaintance of Amudha, and every acquaintance of Amudha is a friend of Bharatan.

Answer the next 6 questions based on the information given 

Ten objects o1, o2, …, o10 were distributed among Amar, Barat, Charles, Disha, and Elise. Each item went to exactly one person. Each person got exactly two of the items, and this pair of objects is called her/his bundle.

The following table shows how each person values each object.

The value of any bundle by a person is the sum of that person’s values of the objects in that
bundle. A person X envies another person Y if X values Y’s bundle more than X’s own bundle.

For example, hypothetically suppose Amar’s bundle consists of o1 and o2, and Barat’s bundle consists of o3 and o4. Then Amar values his own bundle at 4 + 9 = 13 and Barat’s bundle at 9 + 3 = 12. Hence Amar does not envy Barat. On the other hand, Barat values his own bundle at 7 + 5 = 12 and Amar’s bundle at 5 + 9 = 14. Hence Barat envies Amar.

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The following facts are known about the actual distribution of the objects among the five
people.

1. If someone’s value for an object is 10, then she/he received that object.
2. Objects o1, o2, and o3 were given to three different people.
3. Objects o1 and o8 were given to different people.
4. Three people value their own bundles at 16. No one values her/his own bundle at a number higher than 16.
5. Disha values her own bundle at an odd number. All others value their own bundles at an even number.
6. Some people who value their own bundles less than 16 envy some other people who value their own bundle at 16. No one else envies others

Answer the next 6 questions based on the information given 

10 players – P1, P2, … , P10 - competed in an international javelin throw event. The number (after P) of a player reflects his rank at the beginning of the event, with rank 1 going to the topmost player. There were two phases in the event with the first phase consisting of rounds 1, 2, and 3, and the second phase consisting of rounds 4, 5, and 6. A throw is measured in terms of the distance it covers (in meters, up to one decimal point accuracy), only if the throw is a ‘valid’ one. For an invalid throw, the distance is taken as zero. A player’s score at the end of a round is the maximum distance of all his throws up to that round. Players are re-ranked after every round based on their current scores. In case of a tie in scores, the player with a prevailing higher rank retains the higher rank. This ranking determines the order in which the players go for their throws in the next round.

In each of the rounds in the first phase, the players throw in increasing order of their latest rank, i.e. the player ranked 1 at that point throws first, followed by the player ranked 2 at that point and so on. The top six players at the end of the first phase qualify for the second phase. In each of the rounds in the second phase, the players throw in decreasing order of their latest rank i.e. the player ranked 6 at that point throws first, followed by the player ranked 5 at that point and so on. The players ranked 1, 2, and 3 at the end of the sixth round receive gold, silver, and bronze medals respectively.

All the valid throws of the event were of distinct distances (as per stated measurement accuracy). The tables below show distances (in meters) covered by all valid throws in the first and the third round in the event.

Distances covered by all the valid throws in the first round

The following facts are also known.

1. Among the throws in the second round, only the last two were valid. Both the throws enabled these players to qualify for the second phase, with one of them qualifying with the least score. None of these players won any medal.
2. If a player throws first in a round AND he was also the last (among the players in the current round) to throw in the previous round, then the player is said to get a double. Two players got a double.
3. In each round of the second phase, exactly one player improved his score. Each of these improvements was by the same amount.
4. The gold and bronze medalists improved their scores in the fifth and the sixth rounds respectively. One medal winner improved his score in the fourth round.
5. The difference between the final scores of the gold medalist and the silver medalist, as well as the difference between the final scores of the silver medalist and the bronze medalist was 1.0 m.

Answer the next 6 questions based on the information given below.

In a certain board examination, students were to appear for examination in five subjects: English, Hindi, Mathematics, Science and Social Science. Due to a certain emergency situation, a few of the examinations could not be conducted for some students. Hence, some students missed one examination and some others missed two examinations. Nobody missed more than two examinations.

The board adopted the following policy for awarding marks to students. If a student appeared in all five examinations, then the marks awarded in each of the examinations were on the basis of the scores obtained by them in those examinations.

• If a student missed only one examination, then the marks awarded in that examination was the average of the best three among the four scores in the examinations they appeared for.
• If a student missed two examinations, then the marks awarded in each of these examinations was the average of the best two among the three scores in the examinations they appeared for.
• The marks obtained by six students in the examination are given in the table below. Each of them missed either one or two examinations.

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The following facts are also known.

• Four of these students appeared in each of the English, Hindi, Science, and Social Science examinations.
• The student who missed the Mathematics examination did not miss any other examination.
• One of the students who missed the Hindi examination did not miss any other examination. The other student who missed the Hindi examination also missed the Science examination.

Answer the next 4 questions based on the information given below.

A shopping mall has a large basement parking lot with parking slots painted in it along a single row. These slots are quite narrow; a compact car can fit in a single slot but an SUV requires two slots. When a car arrives, the parking attendant guides the car to the first available slot from the beginning of the row into which the car can fit.

For our purpose, cars are numbered according to the order in which they arrive at the lot. For example, the first car to arrive is given a number 1, the second a number 2, and so on. This numbering does not indicate whether a car is a compact or an SUV. The configuration of a parking lot is a sequence of the car numbers in each slot. Each single vacant slot is represented by letter V.

For instance, suppose cars numbered 1 through 5 arrive and park, where cars 1, 3 and 5 are compact cars and 2 and 4 are SUVs. At this point, the parking lot would be described by the sequence 1, 2, 3, 4, 5. If cars 2 and 5 now vacate their slots, the parking lot would now be described as 1, V, V, 3, 4. If a compact car (numbered 6) arrives subsequently followed by an SUV (numbered 7), the parking lot would be described by the sequence 1, 6, V, 3, 4, 7.

Answer the following questions INDEPENDENTLY of each other.