Five horses - 'FIRST', 'SECOND', 'THIRD', 'FOURTH' and 'FIFTH' ran in the race. (There were no ties.)
'FIRST' did not come first.
'SECOND' was neither first nor last.
'THIRD' came in one place after 'FIRST'.
'FOURTH' was not second.
'FIFTH' was two places below 'FOURTH'.
In what order did the horses finish?
The order of the horses is:
FOURTH
SECOND
FIFTH
FIRST
THIRD
I solved it by filling out the grid below... You can see below which sentence gave me the clue to say that a given horse could or could not come in any given position. Where you see (6), I had to go back to the third statement after having read the 5th statement.
For instance, the first statement was
"'FIRST' did not come in first", so I placed N(1) in the appropriate position.
PLACE
1 2 3 4 5
NAME _____ _____ _____ _____ _____
| | | | | |
FIRST | N(1)| N(6)| N(5)| Y(6)| N(3)|
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
| | | | | |
SECOND | N(2)| Y(6)| N(5)| N(6)| N(2)|
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
| | | | | |
THIRD | N(3)| N(5)| N(5)| N(5)| Y(5)|
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
| | | | | |
FOURTH | Y(5)| N(4)| N(5)| N(5)| N(5)|
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
| | | | | |
FIFTH | N(5)| N(5)| Y(5)| N(5)| N(5)|
|_____|_____|_____|_____|_____|
solution (spoiler)
