A cylinder is painted in 6 colours - Green, Blue, Yellow, Violet, Red and Pink. Three positions are shown below.
Answer: C
Asked: the colour on the face marked "?". A cylinder has 2 flat ends and, here, 4 curved strips.
Step 1: identify the ends and strips. Yellow (figure 1) and Pink (figures 2 and 3) appear on the circular ends. So Green, Blue, Violet and Red are the four curved strips.
Step 2: order the strips. Green is seen next to Blue (figure 1) and next to Violet (figure 3). So Red is opposite Green on the curved surface, and the order around the cylinder is Green, Blue, Red, Violet.
Step 3: find the direction. In figure 3 the Pink end faces right, with Green above Violet. Looking at the Pink end, the strips therefore run Green → Violet → Red → Blue in one rotational sense.
In figure 2 the Pink end is on top and we see two strips side by side, "?" on the left and Red on the right. Turn figure 3's cylinder so its Pink end points up. The strip that sits just before Red in the same rotational sense is Violet.
Blue is also next to Red, but it lies on the other side of Red. It would only appear to the left of Red if the cylinder were seen as a mirror image.
Answer: Violet
