What SBI Clerk asks
Puzzles are the single biggest block of the Reasoning section: usually two or three puzzles of five questions each in Prelims (10-15 marks) and longer, two-variable puzzles in Mains. Recent papers (2022-2025) have used these types again and again:
- Floor-based: 5 to 8 floors, one person per floor, often with a second attribute (city, colour, car). Variant: floor + flat (each floor has two or three flats, east/west).
- Box stacking: boxes kept one above another, sometimes with weights or item counts.
- Scheduling: months (with 30/31-day facts), months x two dates (e.g. 9th and 21st), days of a week, or years.
- Comparison: heights, weights, marks or ages, often with one or two actual values.
- Designation / category: a fixed hierarchy (Director > GM > ... > Clerk) combined with colours, fruits or departments.
Step-by-step method
- Draw the frame first: a column of floors (top at the top), a row of dates, or a seniority ladder. Write the attributes as empty columns.
- Start with fixed clues: "lives on floor 3", "is the Director", "has an appointment on 9 May". Then use clues that connect two people directly ("immediately above", "only one person between").
- Branch, do not guess: if a clue allows two positions, draw Case 1 and Case 2 side by side and carry both forward. Most puzzles collapse to one case within two or three clues.
- Use negative clues last: "F does not like Red", "not on the top floor" usually decide the final pair.
- Re-read every clue against the final grid before answering. This 20-second check prevents most silly errors.
Key phrases decoded
| Phrase | Meaning |
|---|---|
| Only two persons live between A and B | Floor difference is 3 (direction not fixed) |
| A lives immediately above B | A = B + 1 (same flat column in flat puzzles) |
| As many persons above A as below B | (top - A) = (B - bottom) |
| C is heavier than only two persons | Exactly two are lighter, so C is 3rd from the bottom |
| A month with 30 days | April, June, September, November |
Worked example
Seven persons live on floors 1-7. K lives on an even floor below J, with one person between them. So (K, J) is (2, 4) or (4, 6). If a later clue puts the Pink lover immediately above J and also says the Grey lover lives below K, test both cases: the case that leaves no floor below K for Grey (or forces a contradiction) is dropped. Write the surviving case as a clean table and answer all five questions from it.
Time target
Prelims: 5-6 minutes per easy puzzle (5 questions), 7-8 minutes for a moderate one. If no case closes after 3 minutes, move on and return later - a half-solved puzzle scores zero, while the next puzzle may be easy.