Both 2025 shifts opened the reasoning section with a six-person row facing north. Number the seats, place the fixed clue first, and the rest falls into place.
These questions are not hard. They are long. The whole skill is ordering the clues so you never have to guess.
Draw six numbered boxes before you read a single clue. Seat 1 is at the extreme left, seat 6 at the extreme right.
Every AAI seating question so far has specified north, which is the easy case. Read that word anyway — one paper changing it to south would catch out anyone who assumed.
Never start reading the clues until six numbered boxes are on your paper. Trying to hold positions in your head is the single reason this topic eats time.
Among four or five clues, exactly one usually pins a person to a definite seat. That is your anchor. Place it first, then work outwards. Starting with a relative clue instead forces you to test cases you never needed.
The first two are hard anchors — a single seat, no alternatives. The third is a soft anchor with two options, so use it second.
Scan all the clues once and look for the one that names a count from an end. That clue is worth a definite seat, and everything else hangs off it.
Six students — Adi, Poonam, Moni, Bulbul, Shikha and Arun — sit in a straight line facing north. Only one person sits to the right of Arun. Only two people sit between Moni and Bulbul. Only one person sits between Bulbul and Poonam. Shikha sits to the immediate left of Adi. Adi is not an immediate neighbour of Moni.
"Only one person sits between A and B" is not the same as "A and B are two apart" until you convert it. Get the conversion automatic and these questions stop being slow.
Note that a gap clue gives you a difference but not a direction, so it always produces two possible placements. A "kth to the left" clue gives you both difference and direction, so it produces only one.
"R is not an immediate neighbour of T" can never place anyone. It only removes an option. Apply every positive clue first, and use the negative clue at the end to break the final tie — that is exactly the job it does in both 2025 questions.
Two people between means a difference of three. One person between means a difference of two. Write the number down as a difference the moment you read the clue.
Six students — Tejas, Rashmi, Pragya, Amit, Shiva and Vijay — sit in a straight line facing north. Tejas sits second to the left of Vijay. Only one student is between Vijay and Amit. Only two are to the left of Pragya. Rashmi is not an immediate neighbour of Tejas.
A south-facing row reverses every left and right in the question, but not the seat numbering on your page. Keep the numbering fixed and flip only the language.
The safest habit is to keep drawing seats 1 to 6 from your left every time, and mark a small arrow above the row for the facing direction. Then translate each clue as you read it rather than redrawing the row backwards.
Redrawing the row backwards is how people lose track halfway through. Keep the boxes fixed and translate each clue as it comes.
Round a table the same clue language applies, but left and right now mean clockwise and anticlockwise — and which is which depends on whether people face the centre or face outward.
In a circle of n people, the person directly opposite is n ÷ 2 seats away in either direction — so with eight people, seat 1 faces seat 5.
Picture yourself sitting at the table facing the middle. Your left hand sweeps clockwise around the rim. Flip it when everyone turns their backs to the centre.
Practice covering all five arrangement types, with printed blank seat rows and circular tables so you can build each arrangement by hand. Print it, solve it, keep it.
Multiple choice and assertion–reason, building in difficulty. Full solutions are in the downloadable PDF above.
Live classes cover every reasoning, aptitude, English and GK topic straight from the real papers, with the shortcut for each question type drilled until it is automatic.