Logical reasoning is the biggest section in HCL CAT and the one where school students gain most from practice, because the question types repeat. Eight questions here — blood relations, number series, coding–decoding, direction sense and alphabetical order — each with the quickest method shown.
At a family reunion, a man said to a woman, "Your mother's husband's sister is my aunt." How is the woman related to the man?
Find the next term in the series: 51, 52, 53, 55, 58, 63, ____
Find the missing numbers in the series: 4, 16, 36, __, 100, __, 196
If 'bed' is called 'bathroom', 'bathroom' is called 'sofa', 'sofa' is called 'fan', 'fan' is called 'wall', 'wall' is called 'light' and 'light' is called 'room', then what do we sit on?
In a code language, 'kun fun dung' means 'honey and sweets', 'sai dung fi hi' means 'sweets are loved' and 'nik dung di fug lo' means 'she cannot eat sweets'. What does 'dung' stand for?
A whale swims 20 m towards the east and turns right, swims 10 m and turns right, swims 9 m and turns left, swims 5 m and turns left, swims 12 m and finally turns left and swims 6 m. Which direction is the whale facing now?
One morning just after sunrise, Pritesh stood facing a pole. The shadow of the pole fell exactly to his right. Which direction was he facing?
Which of these words comes first in an English dictionary?
Method notes
- Series: write the differences first; check squares and cubes; look for Fibonacci-style differences (each the sum of the previous two).
- Coding-decoding: try "reverse the word" first, then "shift each letter"; for word-code sentences, find the word and code common to all sentences.
- Blood relations: replace phrases step by step — "mother's husband" = father — and draw a tiny tree; never solve in your head.
- Directions: draw axes, put the start at the origin and track (x, y) after every move; the final point gives both distance and direction.
- Turns: clockwise from east goes to south; anticlockwise from east goes to north. Add the angles with signs.
- Dictionary order: compare letter by letter; the first differing letter decides.
A second, non-overlapping set of the same topics is on the HCLTech GET reasoning page.