SANDY TECHFANATIC

Here is the collection of some really nice logical & aptitude test questions for interview or quiz preparation. Answers of the logical & aptitude questions are provided for the reference at the bottom of this article.

1. A man decides to buy a nice horse. He pays $60 for it, and he is very content with the strong animal. After a year, the value of the horse has increased to $70 and he decides to sell the horse. But already a few days later he regrets his decision to sell the beautiful horse, and he buys it again. Unfortunately he has to pay $80 to get it back, so he loses $10. After another year of owning the horse, he finally decides to sell the horse for $90. What is the overall profit the man makes?

2. A bus run at 100 km/hr top speed. It can carry a maximum of 6 persons. If speed of bus decreases in fixed proportion with increase in number of person, find speed when three person are traveling in bus.

3. A man wanted to enter an exclusive club but did not know the password that was required. He waited by the door and listened. A club member knocked on the door and the doorman said, "twelve." The member replied, "six" and was let in. A second member came to the door and the doorman said, "six." The member replied, "three" and was let in. The man thought he had heard enough and walked up to the door. The doorman said, "ten" and the man replied, "five". But he was not let in. What should have he said?

4. There are 20 pieces of bread to divide among 20 people. A man eats 3 pieces, woman eats 2 pieces and a child eats half piece of bread. Tell the correct combination of men, women and children so that they are 20 people in total and everyone gets the bread. Note that a man cannot eat less than 3 or more than 3. A woman cannot eat less than 2 or more than 2 and the child cannot eat less than half or more than half piece of the bread. You have to tell there are how may are men, women and children in those 20 people.

5. A cube of side 4cm is painted with 3 colors red, blue and green in such a way that opposite sides are painted in the same color. This cube is now cut into 64 cubes of equal size.

1. How many have at least two sides painted in different colors.
2. How many cubes have only one side painted.
3. How many cubes have no side painted.
4. How many have exactly one side not painted.

6. How many squares are there on a normal chessboard?

7. Three people picked 65 apples altogether. At the first tree they each picked the same number of apples. At the second tree they each picked 3 times as many as they picked at the first tree. When they finished at the third tree, the group had 5 times as many apples as they had when they started at that tree. At the fourth tree the group picked just 5 apples. How many apples did each person pick at the first tree?

Answers

1. Consider the trade-story as if it describes two separate trades, where: In the first trade, the man buys something for $60 and sells it again for $70, so he makes a profit of $10. In the second trade, the man buys something for $80 and sells it again for $90, so he makes again a profit of $10.

Conclusion: The man makes an overall profit of $10 + $10 = $20.

You can also look at the problem as follows:

The total expenses are $60 + $80 = $140 and the total earnings are $70 + $90 = $160. The overall profit is therefore $160 - $140 = $20.

2. 100 Km/hr because that is the top speed of the bus.

3. The man had to reply the number of characters in the word the Doorman was asking. He should have replied "Three" instead of "Five".

4. There are 5 women, 1 man and 14 children.

5. Here are the answers.

1. Cubes that have at least two sides painted in different colours are 24 + 8 = 32.
2. Cubes that have only one side painted are 24.
3. Cubes that have no side painted = 8.
4. Cubes that have exactly one side not painted = 0.

Chessboard Squares6. There are actually 204 squares on a chessboard. Surprised! Here is the explanation. There are 64 (1x1) squares. There are 49 (2x2) squares. There are 36 (3x3) squares. There are 25 (4x4) squares. There are 16 (5x5) squares. There are 9 (6x6) squares. Then there are 4 (7x7) squares and 1 big 8x8 square. So, there are a total of 204 squares on a normal chessboard.

7. One Apple

S. No. Question Title
1 What gets wetter and wetter the more it dries?
2 You throw away the outside and cook the inside. Then you eat the outside and throw away the inside. What did you eat?
3 What goes up and down the stairs without moving?
4 What can you catch but not throw?
5 I can run but not walk. Wherever I go, thought follows close behind. What am I?
6 What's black and white and red all over?
7 What goes around the world but stays in a corner?
8 I have holes in my top and bottom, my left and right, and in the middle. But I still hold water. What am I?
9 Give me food, and I will live; give me water, and I will die. What am I?
10 The man who invented it doesn't want it. The man who bought it doesn't need it. The man who needs it doesn't know it. What is it?
11 I run over fields and woods all day. Under the bed at night I sit not alone. My tongue hangs out, up and to the rear, awaiting to be filled in the morning. What am I?
12 Throw it off the highest building, and I'll not break. But put me in the ocean, and I will. What am I?
13 What can run but never walks, has a mouth but never talks, has a head but never weeps, has a bed but never sleeps?
14 No sooner spoken than broken. What is it?
15 A certain crime is punishable if attempted but not punishable if committed. What is it?
16 You use a knife to slice my head and weep beside me when I am dead. What am I?
17 I'm the part of the bird that's not in the sky. I can swim in the ocean and yet remain dry. What am I?
18 I am mother and father, but never birth or nurse. I'm rarely still, but I never wander. What am I?
19 I went into the woods and got it. I sat down to seek it. I brought it home with me because I couldn't find it. What is it?
20 I am weightless, but you can see me. Put me in a bucket, and I'll make it lighter. What am I?
21 I never was, am always to be, No one ever saw me, nor ever will, And yet I am the confidence of all To live and breathe on this terrestrial ball.What am I?
22 I'm light as a feather, yet the strongest man can't hold me for much more than a minute. What am I?
23 I am the black child of a white father, a wingless bird, flying even to the clouds of heaven. I give birth to tears of mourning in pupils that meet me, even though there is no cause for grief, and at once on my birth I am dissolved into air. What am I?
24 Pronounced as one letter, And written with three, Two letters there are, And two only in me. I'm double, I'm single, I'm black, blue, and gray, I'm read from both ends, And the same either way. What am I?
25 At night they come without being fetched, and by day they are lost without being stolen. What are they?
26 If we say MUMMY, they come together & go apart when we say DADDY. what are they?
27 What goes up & never comes down?
28 Patches over patches but no stitches; What is it?
29 What is that we cannot see, but is always before you?
30 What goes up & down a hill, but never moves?
31 You can never wet it. What is it?
32 What belongs to You, but used by your friends more often you do?
33 I am the beginning of the end. You can see mee twice in a week but not in a day, once in a year but twice in a decade. What am I?



Here are the answers.
1. Towel
2. Corn on the Cob
3. Railing
4. Cold
6. Newspaper (Red means Read)
7. A Postage Stamp
9. Fire
10. Coffin
11. Shoes/Boots
12. Paper Napkin or Tissue Paper
13. River
14. Silence
15. Suicide
16. Onion
17. Bird's Shadow
18. A Tree
20. Hole
21. Oxygen
22. Breath
23. Smoke
24. Eye
25. Stars in the Sky.
26. Your Lips
27. Age
28. A Cabbage Patch
29. The Future
30. A Road
31. water
32. Your name
33. E letter

Lakshmi N Mittal

Steel tycoon Lakshmi Niwas Mittal is the richest Indian in the world, with an estimated wealth of $25 billion. He resides in London, has his company registered in the Netherlands, but still holds an Indian passport. Although Mittal Steel was already the world's biggest steel company, his king-sized ambitions were evident when he took over steel giant Arcelor to create a new steel behemoth -- Arcelor-Mittal.

L N Mittal left India in the mid-1970s to start his career. He was sent to Indonesia by his father to shut down the family's ailing steel plant and sell the land. Instead, young Mittal saw an opportunity and turned the plant around.

To prove that this was no fluke, Mittal acquired a 1.3 million tonne, Iscot Steel plant in Trinidad & Tobago, which was losing $100,000 a day. One year of Mittal-style management and it was making profits, the LN Mittal legend was born. That move helped him get into America.

The Mexican government seeing the success that Mittal made of Iscot, asked him to take over their ailing steel plants in 1992. But it was not all that smooth. In 1994 Mittal had differences with his brothers and father, and went on to form his own company. The following year Mittal entered the European market, acquiring the 5 million tonne Kazakh steel plant, Karmet. Meanwhile, Mittal had listed Ispat International on the New York and Amsterdam Stock Exchanges in 1997. Eight years later Mittal Steel became the world's largest steel maker when he took over the US's largest steel producer -- the International Steel Group. He then consolidated all his steel holdings into Mittal Steel.

Ratan Tata

Ratan Naval Tata, a bachelor, is the chairman of the Tata Group, India's most respected conglomerate. He was born into a Parsi family in Mumbai (then called Bombay) to Soonoo and Naval Hormusji Tata on December 28, 1937.

He did a short stint with Jones and Emmons in Los Angeles, California, before returning to India in 1962. He had earlier turned down an IBM job offer. He joined the family business in 1962 and worked with many of his group's companies. He took over as group chairman from the legendary J R D Tata in 1991.

Since then, he has been instrumental in boosting the fortunes of the Tata Group, which has amongst the largest market capitalisations in the Indian stock markets.

Tata Motors developed the Tata Indica in 1998. This was the first 'entirely Indian' passenger car. Ratan Tata's dream now is to manufacture a car costing just Rs 100,000. Ratan Tata holds a degree in Architecture and Structural Engineering from Cornell University. He has also done the Advanced Management Program from Harvard Business School in 1974-1975.

Ratan Tata was honoured with one of India's highest civilian awards, the Padma Bhushan, on January 26, 2000.

Mukesh D Ambani

Mukesh Ambani, the chairman and managing director of India's largest private sector enterprise -- Reliance Industries Limited -- was born on April 19, 1957.

His father, the legendary Dhirubhai Ambani, was then a small businessman who later on rose to become one of the legends of Indian industry.

Mukesh joined Reliance Industries in 1981 and was the brain behind Reliance's backward integration from textiles into polyester fibres and into petrochemicals. During the process of backward integration, Mukesh Ambani led the creation of 51 new, world-class manufacturing facilities involving diverse technologies that raised Reliance's manufacturing capacities manifold.

The world's largest grassroots petroleum refinery at Jamnagar is his brainchild. He was also the in-charge of Dhirubhai's dream project Reliance Infocomm. But after the split in the Reliance Empire, Reliance Infocomm went to his brother Anil.

Mukesh Ambani is now planning to enter retail sector in a big way and will launch a chain of 'Reliance Fresh' retail stores. He also entered into an agreement with the Haryana government to establish a Special Economic Zone with an investment running into billions of rupees.
He has a bachelor's degree in Chemical Engineering from University of Bombay and a master's in Business Administration from Stanford University, USA.

Nandan Nilekani

Nandan Nilekani is the CEO and managing director of Infosys Technologies. He, along with N R Narayana Murthy and five others, co-founded India's IT jewel, Infosys. Born in Bangalore to Durga and Mohan Rao Nilekani, he graduated from the Indian Institute of Technology, Bombay.

After graduation, he met Narayana Murthy, who then led Patni Computer Systems's software group, seeking a job. Murthy hired the young engineer. That was the beginning of a relationship that was to create Indian corporate history.

Three years later, seven enthusiasts (including Nandan) decided to start their own outfit (Infosys Technologies Ltd) with Murthy in the lead. Their decision rewrote the domestic software industry of India.

He became the chief executive officer of Infosys in March 2002. He now leads the company with Narayana Murthy having retired in August 2006. He is married to Rohini, an English-language novelist, and they have two children: daughter Janhavi and son Nihar. He speaks Konkani at home.

In 2006, he was awarded the Padma Bhushan by the Government of India. He is regarded by Time magazine as one of the 100 most influential people in the world in its issue of May 2006.

Azim H Premji

Azim Hashim Premji, the chairman of Wipro Technologies, is one of the richest Indians. He is an icon among Indian businessmen, especially in the software industry. Born on July 24, 1945, Premji was studying Electrical Engineering at Stanford University, USA when due to the sudden demise of his father; he was called upon to handle the family business at the age of 21.

Wipro was then Western Indian Vegetable Products, a small cooking oil company. Premji diversified into bakery fats, ethnic ingredient based toiletries, hair care soaps, baby toiletries, lighting products and hydraulic cylinders. And then shifted focus from soaps to software.

He transformed Wipro into one of India's most successful IT companies. Under Azim Premji's stewardship, Wipro has grown from a fledgling Rs 70 million oil company into an IT giant with a turnover of $2.4 billion and an employee strength of 57,000.

Azim Premji has regularly featured in the Forbes' list of the world's richest people. He was also rated among the world's 100 most influential people by the Time magazine. In 2005, the Indian government honoured him with Padma Bhushan, one of the nation's highest civilian awards.

Anil D Ambani

The fourth richest Indian today, with a net worth of about $13.5 billion, Anil Ambani is chairman of Reliance Communications, Reliance Capital, Reliance Energy and Reliance Natural Resources Limited.

Before the Reliance Empire split, he was vice chairman and managing director of Reliance Industries Limited. The Reliance group was founded by his late father Dhirubhai Ambani.

Anil was born on June 4, 1959. He joined Reliance in 1983, two years after his elder brother Mukesh, as co-chief executive officer. He is credited with leading India's foray into overseas capital markets with international public offerings of global depositary receipts, convertibles and bonds. He also directed RIL's efforts to raise $2 billion from global markets.

Anil was elected as an independent Member of the Rajya Sabha with the support of the Samajwadi Party, but resigned on March 25, 2006. Ambani who was once ridiculed for being overweight at a shareholder's meeting is now a fitness freak and runs the Mumbai marathon regularly.

He has a bachelor's degree in Science from the University of Bombay and a master's in Business Administration from The Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania. He is married to former Bollywood actress Tina Munim.

Sunil Mittal

Sunil B Mittal is chairman and managing director of Bharti group. Bharti is India's largest GSM-based mobile phone service. Son of a politician, he built his Bharti group, along with two siblings, into India's largest mobile phone operator in just ten years. Vodafone and SingTel both own stakes in recently renamed flagship Bharti Airtel. The group also has partnerships with Axa for insurance and with the Rothschild family for exporting fruits and vegetables. He plans to go into retailing along with the world's largest retailer Wal-Mart.

The 49-year-old has always been a pioneer. A first generation entrepreneur, he started his first business in 1976 with a capital investment of Rs 20,000. He decided not to be a politician and set up a small bicycle business in Ludhiana. By 1979, Sunil Mittal realised that his ambitions could not be fulfilled in Ludhiana, so he moved out to Mumbai. He initially founded a number of trading concerns, and established the first company to manufacture push button telephones in India.

In 1982, Mittal started a full-fledged business selling portable generators imported from Japan. He was one of the first entrepreneurs to identify the mobile telecom business as a major growth area and launched services in Delhi in 1995. Under his leadership the company has gone from strength to strength.

K V Kamath

Kundapur Vaman Kamath is the managing director and CEO of ICICI Bank, the largest private bank in India. Kamath, born on December 2, 1947, began his career with ICICI -- the parent body of ICICI Bank -- in 1971 and has since then worked to take ICICI places. He has helped the financial institution evolve into a modern, tech-savvy organisation.

He joined the project finance division of ICICI in 1971 and moved on to different departments to gather rich experience. In 1988, he joined the Asian Development Bank, Manila in their private sector department. He worked in most of the developing countries in the region including China, Thailand, Philippines, Indonesia and Vietnam. In May 1996, he returned to ICICI as its managing director and chief executive officer. He is a graduate of the Indian Institute of Management, Ahmedabad.

Kumar Mangalam Birla

Kumar Mangalam Birla, born on June 14, 1967, is among the richest persons in India and the eighth youngest billionaire outside India. He is chairman of the Aditya Birla Group, one of India's largest business groups. Some of the AV Birla group's companies are: Grasim, Hindalco, UltraTech Cement, Aditya Birla Nuvo and Idea Cellular.

He took over as chairman of the group in 1995, at the age of 28, after the sudden demise of his father, Aditya Birla. When he took charge, there were doubts about his ability to handle the giant business house, but he proved all naysayers wrong.

In the 11 years that he has led the group, he has won admiration, recognition and praise for his management acumen and contribution to the industry.

Under his leadership, the group has consolidated its position in existing businesses and ventured into cellular telephony, asset management, software and BPO. He is a chartered accountant and also holds an MBA from the London Business School.

Rahul Bajaj

Rahul Bajaj is the chairman of the Bajaj Group, which ranks among the top 10 business houses in India. He is one of India's most distinguished business leaders and internationally respected for his business acumen and entrepreneurial spirit.

He took over the reins of Bajaj group in 1965. Under his leadership, the turnover of the Bajaj Auto the flagship company has risen from Rs 72 million to Rs 46.16 billion. The initiation of liberalisation in India posed great challenges for Bajaj Auto. Liberalisation brought the threat of cheap imports and FDI from top companies like Honda. Rahul Bajaj became famous as the head of the Bombay Club, which opposed liberalisation.

The scooter sales plummeted as people were more interested in motorcycles and the rival Hero Honda was a pioneer in it. The recession and stock market collapse of 2001 hit the company hard and it was predicted that the days of Bajaj Auto were numbered.

However, Bajaj Auto re-invented itself, established a world-class factory in Chakan, invested in R&D and came up with Bajaj Pulsar Motorcycle. Bajaj Pulsar is currently a leader in its segment.

Recently, Rahul Bajaj was elected to Rajya Sabha from Maharashtra. He is an alumnus of Harvard, St. Stephen's and Cathedral.

1. What do you put in a toaster?

Answer: The answer is bread. If you said "toast", then give up now and go do something else. Try not to hurt yourself. If you said, "bread", go to question two.

2. Say "silk" five times. Now spell "silk". What do cows drink?

Answer: Cows drink water. If you said "milk", please do not attempt the next question. . If you said "water" then proceed to question three.

3. If a red house is made from red bricks and a blue house is made from blue bricks and a pink house is made from pink bricks and a black house is made from black bricks, what is a greenhouse made from?

Answer: Greenhouses are made from glass. If you said "glass", then go on to question four.

4. Twenty years ago, a plane is flying at 20,000 feet over Germany. If you will recall, Germany at the time was politically divided into West Germany and East Germany. Anyway, during the flight, TWO of the engines fail. The pilot, realizing that the last remaining engine is also failing, decides on a crash landing procedure. Unfortunately the engine fails before he has time and the plane crashes smack in the middle of "no man's land" between East Germany and West Germany. Where would you bury the survivors - East Germany or West Germany or in "no man's land"?

Answer: You don't, of course, bury survivors. If you said, "Don't bury the survivors" then proceed to the next question.

5. If the hour hand on a clock moves 1/60th of a degree every minute then how many degrees will the hour hand move in one hour?

Answer: One degree. If you said "360 degrees" or anything other than “one degree”, you are to be congratulated on getting this far.

6. Without using a calculator - You are driving a bus from London to Milford Haven in Wales. In London, 17 people get on the bus. In Reading, six people get off the bus and nine people get on. In Swindon, Two people get off and four get on. In Cardiff, 11 people get off and 16 people get on. In Swansea, three people get off and five people get on. In Carmarthen, six people get off and three get on. You then arrive at Milford Haven. What was the name of the bus driver and what is his age?

Answer: Oh, for heaven sake! It was YOU and your age. Read the first line again.

A little intelligence test for you - no cheating. Some of these questions are from an MBA entrance test. There are 10 questions. Do not look at the answers found at the end of this document, that would be cheating. Write each of your answers down, it makes a difference. Good Luck!

1. Some months have 30 days, some months have 31 days. How many months have 28 days?
2. If a doctor gives you 3 pills and tells you to take one pill every half hour, how long would it be before all the pills had been taken?
3. I went to bed at eight 8 'clock in the evening and wound up my clock and set the alarm to sound at nine 9 'clock in the morning. How many hours sleep would I get before being awoken by the alarm?
4. Divide 30 by half and add ten. What do you get?
5. A farmer had 17 sheep. All but 9 died. How many live sheep were left?
6. If you had only one match and entered a COLD and DARK room, where there was an oil heater, an oil lamp and a candle, which would you light first?
7. A man builds a house with four sides of rectangular construction, each side having a southern exposure. A big bear comes along. What color is the bear?
8. Take 2 apples from 3 apples. What do you have?
9. How many animals of each species did Moses take with him in the Ark?
10. If you drove a bus with 43 people on board from Chicago and stopped at Pittsburgh to pick up 7 more people and drop off 5 passengers and at Cleveland to drop off 8 passengers and pick up 4 more and eventually arrive at Philadelphia 20 hours later, What's the name of the driver?

Good Luck!

Answers

1. All of them. Every month has at least 28 days.
2. 1 hour. If you take a pill at 1 o'clock, then another at 1.30 and the last at 2'clock, they will be taken in 1 hour.
3. 1 hour. It is a wind up alarm clock which cannot discriminate between a.m. and p.m.
4. 70. Dividing by half is the same as multiplying by 2.
5. 9 live sheep.
6. The match.
7. White.
8. 2 apples.
9. None. It was Noah, not Moses.
10. You are the driver.

You can check your grading score by counting the number of correct answers out of 10.

I am not sure how many of you have noticed a hidden symbol in the Federal Express logo

Yeah, I am talking about the 'arrow' that you can see between the E and the x in this logo. The arrow was introduced to underscore speed and precision, which are part of the positioning of the company.

The SUN Microsystems logo is a wonderful example of symmetry and order. It was a brilliant observation that the letters u and n while arranged adjacent to each other look a lot like the letter S in a perpendicular direction. Spectacular.

The above logo is for an editing studio. I like the way the logo (apple shaped) attempts to convey what they do.

The above are two magazines from the Readers Digest stable. Again, the attempt to communicate what it is about quite figuratively through the logo catches my attention.

I liked this logo of a hair stylist for the cheeky humour it brings to the (dressing) table.

This was a logo created for a puzzle game called Cluenatic. This game involves unravelling four clues. The logo has the letters C, L, U and E arranged as a maze. and from a distance, the logo looks like a key.

This logo is too good. For the name Eight, they have used a font in which each letter is a minor adaptation of the number 8.

Eighty-20 is a small consulting company which does sophisticated financial modeling, as well as some solid database work. All their work is highly quantitative and relies on some serious computational power, and the logo is meant to convey it.

People first guess that 20% of the squares are darkened, but that turns out to be false after counting them. The trick is to view the dark squares as 1's and the light squares as 0's. Then the top line reads 1010000 and the bottom line reads 0010100, which represent 80 and 20 in binary. Kinda like the surreal green screen of The Matrix, they want us to read stuff in binary.

This was a logo designed in-house for some internal event at IBM. I like that they are quite relaxed about the logo, unlike certain other companies who do not like the logo to be tampered with in any way even for internal promotions.

You might think the arrow does nothing here. But it says that amazon.com has everything from a to z and it also represents the smile brought to the customer's face. Wow, that is quite deep.

All of us would like to get more phone per phone (to borrow from a certain car advert), and much to our delight, prices of mobile handsets across the board seem to be dropping all the time. Handsets with entry-level color displays are much in demand these days, and for as little as Rs 5000 you can choose from quite a wide range. Here are some of my recommendations.

Intex IN3333 – Rs 5000

The design of the IN3333 may seem a bit familiar but it’s a neat-looking job. It's clearly an entry-level multimedia mobile, as its features would indicate. The handset is equipped with a 2-inch TFT display with a resolution of 176 x 220 pixels and 256K colors. There's a media player and FM radio, and the 1.3MP camera can also be used as a USB PC webcam. MicroSD card support provides external memory, and you get three preloaded games. Internet connectivity is at your disposal too, as the phone supports GPRS and WAP.

Nokia 3110 Classic – Rs 4650

The 3110 Classic is a simple-looking candy bar handset. It's not a looker, but then it wasn’t designed with style in mind. The screen is a 1.7-inch TFT that can display up to 256K colors at a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels. The keypad is designed for comfort and is quite responsive, as is the S40 interface it runs on. The handset supports MicroSD cards for external memory, which is useful since it's equipped with plenty of media-oriented features: a 1.3MP camera, media player for video and music, and an integrated stereo FM radio. The 3110 is also well-equipped for connectivity – it supports EDGE, GPRS and WAP for net connectivity, as well as USB v2.0 and Stereo Bluetooth.

Sony Ericsson W200i – Rs 4300

The SE W200i is a Walkman series handset. Again, the form factor is not altogether a stunner, but the simple and ergonomic design isn’t bad at all. The 1.8 inch TFT display has a resolution of 128 x 160 pixels and 65K colors. It supports GPRS and WAP for the Net, and USB for PC data transfer. While the handset doesn’t offer Bluetooth, it does support external memory via M2 cards. Other features include a VGA camera, Sony’s Walkman player, and an integrated FM radio. The W200i is available in a range of funky colors