LOGICAL AND

DATA BASED
REASONING
By Varun Khullar
Ex-Civil Servant
IIM Calcutta
GOOGLE INTERVIEW
QUESTIONS
Question: Two old friends, Jack and Bill, meet after a long time.
Three kids
Jack: Hey, how are you man?
Bill: Not bad, got married and I have three kids now.
Jack: That’s awesome. How old are they?
Bill: The product of their ages is 72 and the sum of their ages is the
same as your birth date.
Jack: Cool… But I still don’t know.
Bill: My eldest kid just started taking piano lessons.
Jack: Oh now I get it.
How old are Bill’s kids?
MICROSOFT PUZZLES
Two trains X and Y (80 km from each other) are running towards
each other on the same track with a speed of 40km/hr. A bird starts
from the train X and travels towards train Y with constant speed of
100km/hr. Once it reaches train Y, it turns and starts moving toward
train X. It does this till the two trains collides with each other. Find
the total distance traveled by the bird?
SOLUTION
What is the interviewer looking for : Your approach. If you start
calculating distance from X to Y and the Y to X and so on, you have
already been rejected.
Solution : Velocity of approach for the two trains = (40 + 40)
km/hr
Total time the trains will take to collide = 80km/80km/hr = 1 hour
Total distance travelled by the bird = 100km/hr * 1hr = 100 km.
MICROSOFT PUZZLES
You have two beakers – one of 4 liters and other of 5 liters. You are
expected to pour exactly 7 liters in a bucket. How will you complete
the task?
SOLUTION
Difficulty level of the puzzle : Medium
What is the interviewer looking for : Answer.
Solution :
Step 1 : Fill in 5 liter beaker and empty it in the 4 liter beaker. You
are left with 1 liter in the 5 liter beaker. Pour this 1 liter in the
bucket.
Step 2 : Repeat step 1 and you will have 2 liters in the bucket.
Step 3 : Fill in the 5 liter beaker and add to the [Link] now
have 7 liters in the bucket.
MICROSOFT PUZZLES
There are 5 pirates in a ship. Pirates have hierarchy C1,
C2, C3, C4 and C5.C1 designation is the highest and C5
is the lowest. These pirates have three characteristics :
a. Every pirate is so greedy that he can even take lives
to make more money. b. Every pirate desperately wants
to stay alive. c. They are all very intelligent.
MICROSOFT PUZZLES
There are total 100 gold coins on the ship. The person with the
highest designation on the deck is expected to make the
distribution. If the majority on the deck does not agree to the
distribution proposed, the highest designation pirate will be thrown
out of the ship (or simply killed). Only the person with the highest
designation can be killed at any moment. What is the right
distribution of the coins proposed by the captain so that he is not
killed and does make maximum amount?
The solution of this problem lies in thinking through what will happen if all the pirates
were thrown one by one and then thinking in reverse order.
Let us name pirates as A,B,C,D and E in hierarchy (A being highest).
If only D and E are left at end, D will simply give 0 coins to E and still escape because
majority cannot be reached. Hence, even if E gets 1 coin he will give his vote to the
distributor.
If C, D and E are there on the deck, C will simply give one coin to E to get his vote. And
D simply gets nothing. Hence, even if D gets 1 coin he will give his vote to the
distributor.
If B,C,D and E are there on the deck, B will simply give one coin to D to get his vote. C
& E simply gets nothing.
If A,B,C,D and E are there on the deck, A simply gives 1 coin each to C and E to get
their votes.
Hence, in the final solution A gets 98 coins and only C & E get 1 coin each.
 Practice
Problems
 100 FLOORS WITH 2
EGGS PUZZLE
There is a building of 100 floors If an egg drops from the Nth floor
or above it will break. If it’s dropped from any floor below, it will not
break. You’re given 2 eggs. Find N, while minimizing the number of
drops for the worst case.
 FIND CELEBRITY IN THE
PARTY

There are (n+1) people in a party, they might or might not know
each others names.
There is one celebrity in the group(total n +1 people), celebrity
does not know any of n peoples by name and all n people know
celebrity by name.
You are given the list of people’s names(n+1), You can ask only one
question from the people. Do you know this name ?
How many maximum number of questions you need to ask
to know the celebrity name?
 CROSSING THE BRIDGE
PUZZLE

Four people need to cross a rickety bridge at night. Unfortunately,

they have only one torch and the bridge is too dangerous to cross
without one. The bridge is only strong enough to support two
people at a time. Not all people take the same time to cross the
bridge. Times for each person: 1 min, 2 mins, 7 mins and 10 mins.
What is the shortest time needed for all four of them to cross the
bridge?
 ANT AND TRIANGLE
PROBLEM

Three ants are sitting at the three corners of an equilateral triangle.

Each ant starts randomly picks a direction and starts to move along
the edge of the triangle. What is the probability that none of the
ants collide?
BURNING ROPE PROBLEM
A man has two ropes of varying thickness (Those two ropes are not
identical, they aren’t the same density nor the same length nor the
same width). Each rope burns in 60 minutes. He actually wants to
measure 45 mins. How can he measure 45 mins using only these
two ropes.
He can’t cut the one rope in half because the ropes are non-
homogeneous and he can’t be sure how long it will burn.
MAD KING
A bad king has a cellar of 1000 bottles of delightful and very
expensive wine. A neighboring queen plots to kill the bad king and
sends a servant to poison the wine. Fortunately (or say unfortunately)
the bad king’s guards catch the servant after he has only poisoned
one bottle. Alas, the guards don’t know which bottle but know that
the poison is so strong that even if diluted 100,000 times it would still
kill the king. Furthermore, it takes one month to have an effect. The
bad king decides he will get some of the prisoners in his vast
dungeons to drink the wine. Being a clever bad king he knows he
needs to murder no more than 10 prisoners – believing he can fob off
such a low death rate – and will still be able to drink the rest of the
wine (999 bottles) at his anniversary party in 5 weeks time. Explain
what is in mind of the king, how will he be able to do so ?
MISLABELED JAR
You have 3 jars that are all mislabeled. One jar contains Apple,
another contains Oranges and the third jar contains a mixture of
both Apple and Oranges.
You are allowed to pick as many fruits as you want from each jar to
fix the labels on the jars. What is the minimum number of fruits
that you have to pick and from which jars to correctly label them?
RED AND BLUE MARBLES
You have two jars, 50 red marbles and 50 blue marbles. You need to
place all the marbles into the jars such that when you blindly pick
one marble out of one jar, you maximize the chances that it will be
red. When picking, you’ll first randomly pick a jar, and then
randomly pick a marble out of that jar. You can arrange the marbles
however you like, but each marble must be in a jar.
GOLD BAR PROBLEM
You’ve got someone working for you for seven days and a gold bar
to pay him. The gold bar is segmented into seven connected
pieces. You must give them a piece of gold at the end of every day.
What and where are the fewest number of cuts to the bar of gold
that will allow you to pay him 1/7th each day?
100 DOORS
You have 100 doors in a row that are all initially closed. you make
100 passes by the doors starting with the first door every time. the
first time through you visit every door and toggle the door (if the
door is closed, you open it, if its open, you close it). the second
time you only visit every 2nd door (door #2, #4, #6). the third
time, every 3rd door (door #3, #6, #9), ec, until you only visit the
100th door. What state are the doors in after the last pass? Which
are open which are closed?
10 COINS
You are blindfolded and 10 coins are place in front of you on table.
You are allowed to touch the coins, but can’t tell which way up they
are by feel. You are told that there are 5 coins head up, and 5 coins
tails up but not which ones are which. How do you make two piles
of coins each with the same number of heads up? You can flip the
coins any number of times.
HEAVEN’S GATE
You are standing before two doors. One of the path leads to heaven
and the other one leads to hell. There are two guardians, one by
each door. You know one of them always tells the truth and the
other always lies, but you don’t know who is the honest one and
who is the liar. You can only ask one question to one of them in
order to find the way to heaven. What is the question?
 A BOX OF DEFECTIVE BALLS

You have 10 boxes of balls (each ball weighing exactly10 gm) with
one box with defective balls (each one of the defective balls weigh
9 gm). You are given an electronic weighing machine and only one
chance at it. How will find out which box has the defective balls?
CLOCKS
How many times a day do the minute and hour hands of a clock
overlap?
 SET THEORY
Fun Sports (FS) provides training in three sports - Gilli-danda (G), Kho-Kho
(K), and Ludo (L). Currently it has an enrollment of 39 students each of
whom is enrolled in at least one of the three sports. The following details
are known:
1. The number of students enrolled only in L is double the number of
students enrolled in all the three sports.
2. There are a total of 17 students enrolled in G.
3. The number of students enrolled only in G is one less than the number
of students enrolled only in L.
4. The number of students enrolled only in K is equal to the number of
students who are enrolled in both K and L.
5. The maximum student enrollment is in L.
6. Ten students enrolled in G are also enrolled in at least one more sport.
QUESTION 1
What is the minimum number of students enrolled in both G
and L but not in K?
QUESTION 2
If the numbers of students enrolled in K and L are in the
ratio 19:22, then what is the number of students enrolled in
L?
1.19
2.18
3.22
4.17
QUESTION 3
Due to academic pressure, students who were enrolled in all
three sports were asked to withdraw from one of the three
sports. After the withdrawal, the number of students
enrolled in G was six less than the number of students
enrolled in L, while the number of students enrolled in K
went down by [Link] the withdrawal, how many students
were enrolled in both G and K?
QUESTION 4
Due to academic pressure, students who were enrolled in all
three sports were asked to withdraw from one of the three
sports. After the withdrawal, the number of students
enrolled in G was six less than the number of students
enrolled in L, while the number of students enrolled in K
went down by [Link] the withdrawal, how many students
were enrolled in both G and L?
1.5
2.8
3.7
4.6
 TEA TASTING
A tea taster was assigned to rate teas from six different locations -
Munnar, Wayanad, Ooty, Darjeeling, Assam and Himachal. These teas
were placed in six cups, numbered 1 to 6, not necessarily in the same
order. The tea taster was asked to rate these teas on the strength of their
flavour on a scale of 1 to 10. He gave a unique integer rating to each tea.
Some other information is given below:
1. Cup 6 contained tea from Himachal.
2. Tea from Ooty got the highest rating, but it was not in Cup 3.
3. The rating of tea in Cup 3 was double the rating of the tea in Cup 5.
4. Only two cups got ratings in even numbers.
5. Cup 2 got the minimum rating and this rating was an even number.
6. Tea in Cup 3 got a higher rating than that in Cup 1.
7. The rating of tea from Wayanad was more than the rating of tea from
Munnar, but less than that from Assam.
[Link] was the second highest rating given? (TITA)
[Link] was the number of the cup that contained tea from
Ooty? (TITA)
QUESTION 3
If the tea from Munnar did not get the minimum rating, what
was the rating of the tea from Wayanad?

1.3
2.5
3.1
4.6
QUESTION 4:
If the cup containg teas from Wayanad and Ooty had
consecutive numbers, which of the following may be true ?

[Link] 5 contains tea from Assam

[Link] 1 contains tea from Darjeeling
[Link] from Wayanad has got a rating of 6
[Link] from Darjeeling got the minimum rating
THANK YOU
For Further Queries regarding Mentorship
or any other doubts

Contact -+919815114690
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