Unit 14 · Ordering Deduction
Five Students Competition — Finish-Order Deduction
Lesson 1 of 2
Five-person ordering puzzles look dense, but one fixed clue (who is last) plus a locked pair (who is immediately before whom) usually collapses the grid quickly.
Multi-clue arrival-order questions sit in the harder stretch of Selective TS — the same anchors recur: last/first, before/after chains, “immediately before”, and “not first”.
You must satisfy every constraint at once: a fixed position, relative chains, a consecutive pair treated as one block, and an exclusion — then read off the requested position.
Five people arrive (or finish) one at a time. Clues mix fixed ends, order chains, adjacency, and “not first”. You find who occupies a specific position (often 2nd or 3rd).
Best approach: Anchor the definite slot (e.g. Eva last = 5th). Place the [Dee][Ana] block in legal positions using “Dee not first”. Chain Cal → Ben → Eva, then fill the only consistent grid.
Question
Five students arrive at a competition one at a time — no two arrive at the same moment. Their names are Ana, Ben, Cal, Dee, and Eva.
- Eva arrives last.
- Ben arrives before Eva but after Cal.
- Dee arrives immediately before Ana (no one between them).
- Dee does not arrive first.
- Ana arrives before Ben.
Who arrives second?
Select an answer to see the explanation.
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