Q7

[sno7]

It didn't take that long for me to try all five answer choices, but is there a faster way to find the correct answer to this question? I'm just curious.

[ohthatpatrick]

There's probably not a meaningfully quicker way.

I just tried the question and my thought process started off this way:
K and O are next to each other. Who's on the other side of K?

It can't be K, can't be O, can't be M .... so it has to be L, N, or P.

I wrote out
L K O
N K O
P K O

and then fleshed those out a bit more.

For L K O, I knew that L has to be next to M or N, so I had
M/N L K O

For N K O, I knew that P had to be next to N, so I had
P N K O

For P K O, by the same logic, I knew we needed
N P K O

For the last two, where L isn't yet placed, it was clear that L and M were left and I could put them in either order, so I had
P N K O (L, M)
N P K O (L, M)
and the first one ...
M/N L K O

From there, it only took a few seconds to eliminate the first four answer choices.