Where planning is tested

Three shapes planning takes in tests

1. Arrangement and scheduling puzzles. Seat eight people, schedule six lectures, assign five projects. Each clue restricts the others, so the order in which you apply clues decides whether you finish in two minutes or ten. This is the keeping options open facet.
2. Multi-step problems where the parts must fit. Two linked answers, a set of questions built on one scenario, a chain of operations. One early slip makes every later step wrong. This is look-ahead.
3. Interactive move puzzles. Rearrange, slide or push pieces to a goal within a move limit, where extra moves cost points and some moves cannot be reversed. This is look-ahead and irreversible decisions together.

Campus placement tests

Large IT recruiters such as TCS and Capgemini run an online aptitude round before interviews. Planning shows up in the reasoning section.

• TCS National Qualifier Test. TCS iON describes the Reasoning Ability section as assessing "identifying words and numeric patterns, problem-solving, figural and factual analysis, decision-making, propositional reasoning and visual-spatial reasoning".
• AMCAT. The official Logical Ability syllabus lists deductive reasoning, coding deductive logic, data sufficiency, directional sense, selection decision tables and puzzles, alongside inductive reasoning. Puzzles and selection decision tables are arrangement problems under another name.
• eLitmus pH Test. eLitmus says the test is designed to take two hours and often has three sections: quantitative, verbal and analytical. Its help pages list "relational thinking" and "eye for detail" among the skills measured, which is exactly what a multi-constraint puzzle demands.
• Capgemini. Capgemini's recruitment page says its online aptitude test "assesses logical reasoning, verbal ability, and quantitative skills". Candidates and prep sites also report a game-based aptitude round, with four games drawn from a pool that includes a Motion Challenge, a Grid Challenge, a Switch Challenge, a Digit Challenge and deductive and inductive logic games. Treat the game list as candidate-reported; Capgemini's own page does not list the games.

A worked arrangement puzzle

Five colleagues, A to E, sit in a row of five seats numbered 1 to 5 from left to right.

Show the planned solution

Start with the most constrained person. B has only two possible seats (clue 1), and B's seat fixes D's (clue 3). A and C must be a pair (clue 2). So split into two cases on B.

• B in seat 1: D is in seat 2. The A–C pair fits in seats 3–4 or 4–5, and E takes what is left. A3 C4 E5 puts E next to C, which clue 4 forbids. A4 C5 E3 works.
• B in seat 5: D is in seat 4. A1 C2 E3 puts E next to C. A2 C3 E1 puts E in seat 1, which clue 5 forbids.

Only one arrangement survives: B, D, E, A, C. Notice that clue 5 was only needed to kill the last case. Trying the clues in printed order would have left you juggling far more possibilities.

Entrance exams and higher studies

CAT. One of the three sections is officially called Data Interpretation and Logical Reasoning, and the whole test runs for two hours. The IIMs say the number of questions varies and is not disclosed. News coverage of CAT 2025 reported 22 questions in that section, and prep sites describe the logical reasoning sets as puzzles and seating arrangements. Choosing which sets to attempt is itself a planning decision: a set you abandon halfway has cost you minutes for nothing.

GMAT Focus Edition. The Data Insights section has 20 questions in 45 minutes and "includes multi-part questions where all parts must be correct to score". In Two-Part Analysis you work out answers to two problems "that are connected in some way". This is look-ahead in exam form: you cannot lock in part one without checking what it forces in part two.

GRE. The GRE General Test measures verbal reasoning, quantitative reasoning, critical thinking and analytical writing. It has no logic-puzzle section, so planning matters mainly in how you pace yourself.

UPSC Civil Services (CSAT). The Preliminary Paper II syllabus includes "Logical reasoning and analytical ability" and "Decision making and problem solving", and it is a qualifying paper with a 33% threshold.

Bank exams. The IBPS PO notification lists a Reasoning Ability section of 35 questions in 20 minutes at the preliminary stage and a Reasoning section of 40 questions in 45 minutes at the main stage. Prep sites list puzzles and seating arrangements among the high-weightage topics, with scheduling puzzles at the main stage. At roughly half a minute per question in prelims, puzzles are where a planned case split pays off most.

Game-based assessments

Game-based assessments measure planning more directly, because they can watch you move.

• Aon (formerly cut-e). Aon's smartPredict suite of gamified cognitive tests includes a motionChallenge that the vendor says "measures complex planning capability", alongside gridChallenge, switchChallenge and digitChallenge. An Aon presentation describes the same four challenges and pairs motionChallenge with "Complex planning capability". Prep sites describe it as sliding blocks out of the way to bring a ball onto a target cell, counting every move. Our ShiftMaze is a close cousin: the same family of move-limited ball-and-block puzzle, though ours uses pushing rather than sliding.
• pymetrics (now part of Harver). Prep sites report that the pymetrics suite includes a tower game based on the Tower of London. Our Towers of London is the same family of task. pymetrics does not publish a game-by-game breakdown, so treat this as candidate-reported.
• McKinsey Solve. McKinsey describes Solve as "a gamified assessment created to showcase your problem-solving abilities". A 2025 McKinsey post describes one scenario, Sea Wolf, in which candidates select and evaluate microbes to clean up contaminated sites, and says Solve is given to around 300,000 early-career consultant candidates a year.

Interviews

Consulting firms test planning live. McKinsey says that in its Problem-Solving Interview, "sometimes referred to as a case interview", it presents a business case "to evaluate your analytical thinking and approach to solving complex problems". A strong case answer is a plan: break the question into parts, decide which part to examine first, and say what you would do next depending on what you find.

The same structure helps in a technical or HR interview when you are asked how you would run a project. Name the goal, the dependencies, the step that everything else waits on, and the decision you would delay until you know more. That is planning, spoken aloud.

Where each facet shows up

2 practice questions

1. In the worked arrangement puzzle, why start with person B?
2. Which statement about Capgemini's game-based round is best supported by the sources in this lesson?

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Sources

1. TCS iON. National Qualifier Test. tcsion.com
2. AMCAT. Logical Ability syllabus. myamcat.com
3. eLitmus. pH Test for test takers, elitmus.com; and "What is the duration, syllabus and content of pH Test?", eLitmus help
4. Capgemini India. Recruitment process. capgemini.com
5. PrepInsta (prep site, candidate-reported). Capgemini game-based aptitude. prepinsta.com
6. IIM CAT. Frequently asked questions. iimcat.ac.in
7. Careers360 (news). CAT 2025 response sheet and exam analysis. careers360.com
8. Testbook (prep site). CAT important questions. testbook.com
9. GMAC. GMAT Data Insights. gmac.com
10. ETS. GRE General Test content. ets.org
11. UPSC. Civil Services (Preliminary) Examination 2026 notification. upsc.gov.in
12. IBPS. CRP PO/MT-XVI detailed notification. ibps.in
13. Adda247 (prep site). IBPS PO syllabus. adda247.com
14. cut-e (now Aon). smartPredict product page, archived 10 December 2019. Wayback Machine
15. Siemsen, A. (2019). smartPredict: Development insights and study results of Aon's gamified assessment series. GBA Workshop, Minneapolis. PDF
16. CadetPrep (prep site). Aon cut-e complex planning. cadetprep.academy
17. JobTestPrep (prep site). pymetrics Tower game. jobtestprep.com
18. McKinsey & Company. McKinsey digital assessment (Solve). mckinsey.com
19. McKinsey & Company (2025). From apprenticeship in space to selecting microbes: Meet McKinsey's game-based innovation lab. mckinsey.com
20. McKinsey & Company. Interviewing. mckinsey.com