Introduction to Puzzles and the Right Approach

Puzzles are the single largest block in SBI Clerk Reasoning, carrying 15 to 20 marks once you count seating arrangement alongside them. A puzzle hands you a set of clues and asks you to fit people, floors or items into one fixed arrangement, then fires four to five questions on that same arrangement. Because every question feeds off one grid you build once, a candidate with method can bag a whole set in the time a guesser wastes on two questions. Method, not speed of hand, is what wins here.

The Main Types You Will Meet

SBI Clerk recycles a small family of puzzles: linear and circular seating, floor and box arrangements, scheduling by day, month or date, and categorization puzzles that pair people with attributes such as age, city or salary. Each type has a fixed skeleton — a row of seats, a stack of floors, a calendar line, or a table of variables. Recognising which skeleton a puzzle needs in the first ten seconds tells you exactly what kind of blank grid to draw, and that single decision sets up the whole solve.

Reading Clues the Right Way

A clue is either definite or floating. A definite clue pins something to an exact place — 'P sits at the extreme left' — and must be placed first. A floating clue only fixes a relationship — 'Q is somewhere above R' — and waits until other clues narrow the options. Read every clue once, tag each as definite or floating, and always start building from the definite ones. Trying to place a floating clue too early is the commonest reason a puzzle collapses and has to be restarted.

Build an Elimination Grid

Never solve a puzzle in your head. Draw the skeleton and a small elimination grid beside it, then fill certainties and strike out impossibilities as each clue is used. When a clue says 'S is not on floor two', you cross that cell out rather than ignoring it, because a negative clue silently removes options and often forces a placement elsewhere. The grid turns invisible logic into visible marks, so you never lose track of what a clue has already told you. Keep your grid neat and your handwriting small, because a messy grid costs you the very time it was meant to save when you go back to answer the questions.

Definite Versus Floating — a Quick Map

Solved Example

Example: Five friends sit in a row. Clue one: T is at the extreme right. Clue two: U is second from the left. Place T (definite) and U (definite) first. A third clue, 'V is to the immediate left of T', then fixes V next to T. Two definite clues gave a frame, and the floating clue snapped into it — the answer is U in seat 2, V in seat 4, T in seat 5.

✗ Placing 'V is left of T' before T is fixed  |  ✓ Fixing the two definite clues, then dropping V into the frame