Seating Arrangement

Draw the seats before you read the clues: a line of numbered boxes for a row, a circle of numbered dots for a table. Then place people into seats; never try to hold the arrangement in your head.

Fix the directions once:

• In a row facing north, everyone's left is your left. Number the seats 1, 2, 3 … from the left end.
• Round a table facing the centre, a person's left is clockwise and their right is anticlockwise. If the people face outwards, it is the other way round.
• "Second to the left of Q" means two seats away from Q in Q's left direction — not two people between them.

Then use the clues in this order:

1. Fixed seats first — the ends, the middle, "opposite".
2. Clues that hang on a person already placed — "immediately to the left of P", "third to the right of R".
3. Clues with two choices — "next to", "one person between" — write both cases side by side and let a later clue strike one out.
4. Negative clues last — "does not sit at either end", "does not sit next to" — they break the ties that remain.

The single most common mistake is reading left and right from your own position round a table. Once everyone faces the centre, a person sitting opposite you has their left on your right.

How to check: when the arrangement is complete, read every clue against it once more. A puzzle with a single answer passes all of them; if one fails, an earlier case was chosen wrongly.

Draw numbered seats first · row facing north: left = towards seat 1 · table facing the centre: left = clockwise, right = anticlockwise · facing outwards: reversed · order of clues: fixed seats → linked to a placed person → two-case clues → negative clues · re-check every clue at the end

Five friends P, Q, R, S and T sit in a row facing north. Q sits in the middle. T sits immediately to the right of Q. P sits second to the left of T. R does not sit at the left end. Who sits at the left end? → Number the seats 1–5 from the left. Q is in seat 3, so T is in seat 4. Second to the left of T is seat 2, so P is in seat 2. Seats 1 and 5 remain for R and S; R is not at the left end, so R takes seat 5 and S sits at the left end. Sanity check: the row S, P, Q, T, R satisfies all four clues.