Categorization and Comparison Puzzles

Categorization puzzles hand you a set of people and one or more attributes — city, subject, age, salary or car — and ask you to match each person to their attributes. There is no row or stack to place; instead the arrangement is a table with people down the side and variables across the top. Comparison puzzles are a close cousin that rank people by a single measure such as height or marks. Both are solved by building one clean table and filling it clue by clue.

Set Up the Table First

Draw a grid with one row per person and one column per attribute before touching the clues. This tabular frame is the whole method: every clue either fills a cell or crosses one out, and a completed table answers all the questions at once. Candidates who try to hold three attributes per person in their head lose the thread by the third clue, whereas a table on paper holds it for you and lets you see instantly which cells are still empty.

Direct Clues Versus Negative Clues

A direct clue fills a cell — 'Rahul likes physics' — and goes in at once. A negative clue empties one — 'Priya does not live in Delhi' — and is just as valuable because crossing out cells often leaves a single option standing in a row or column. Treat 'only', 'neither' and 'does not' as gold: they quietly do the work of a direct clue by elimination. Mark every negative in the grid rather than dismissing it as less useful than a positive statement.

Comparison Puzzles: Build One Chain

When a puzzle ranks people by height, age, weight or marks, arrange them along a single line from least to greatest and slot each comparison in as you read it. 'A is taller than B' and 'B is taller than C' chain into A-B-C from tallest. Watch for two-ended clues such as 'only two people are shorter than D', which fix D's exact rank rather than a mere relationship, and place those pinning clues first just as you would a definite clue in any puzzle.

Handle Two-Variable Categorization

Harder SBI Clerk sets attach two attributes to each person — a city and a profession, say — and you must keep both columns consistent. Fill the variable that has the most clues first, because momentum from a nearly complete column spills into the second. Cross-check after each placement that no person ends up with two values in one column; that contradiction is your signal that an earlier floating clue was placed in the wrong cell and must be moved before you go on. A quick habit that pays off is to pencil floating placements lightly and ink them only once a second clue confirms the same cell, so a wrong guess is easy to lift out without redrawing the whole table.

Solved Example

Example: Three people — X, Y, Z — study one subject each from maths, physics, chemistry. Clue: X does not study maths. Clue: Y studies chemistry. Y takes chemistry (direct), so X and Z share maths and physics; since X is not maths, X takes physics and Z takes maths. Two clues, one filled cell and one crossed cell, closed the whole table — the match is X-physics, Y-chemistry, Z-maths.

✗ Ignoring 'X does not study maths' as unhelpful  |  ✓ Crossing out X-maths, which forces Z into maths by elimination