Help with this question

[11+ novice]

Five people called A,B,C,D and E all have different jobs. One is a shopkeeper, one miner,one an engineer, one a doctor and one an architect.The tallest is the Doctor.A is the next tallest. A is next tallest. B is a miner. E is an architect and is the shortest. The engineer is the tallest but two, being much shorter than D. Now answer the following questions:

Who is the Doctor?
who is the engineer
who is the shopkeeper?
who is the shortest?

Is there a way to do this question in a minute? This was really hard and even DH took over 5-10 minutes to solve this problem. Am i missing something really simple here.

[patricia]

Five people called A,B,C,D and E all have different jobs. One is a shopkeeper, one miner, one an engineer, one a doctor and one an architect. The tallest is the Doctor. A is next tallest. B is a miner. E is an architect and is the shortest. The engineer is the tallest but two, being much shorter than D. Now answer the following questions:

Tallest = Doctor = D [Told engineer, who is the 3rd tallest is much shorter than D ]
A = Told is the second Tallest [must be the shop keeper as the only occupation not used] ]
C =Engineer [Told is the second tallest but 2 - Must be C as the only letter not used]
B = Miner [We know is not the shortest/tallest/2nd tallest/tallest but 2]
E= Architect = [Told is the shortest]

Who is the Doctor? = D
who is the engineer = C
who is the shopkeeper? = A


These Z questions generally take more than a minute to complete, more like 3 plus. Always guess move on and come back to at the end. Start with the facts, use diagrams, notes tables, grids. Ring/underline important information.

Patricia

[menagerie]

I did it very quickly by elimination.

Write down ABCDE with space between each letter
Now fill in info you are given and the rest can be worked out pretty quickly. Don't try to do it in your head.

Sorry - that might have sounded pompous. I can spend hours on VR questions sometimes, but that was a fairly straightforward elimination logic problem. The maths ones with brackets and question marks leave me feeling profoundly stupid!

[11+ novice]

I got it Looking at it now it was really easy, maybe it was the phrase 'tallest but two' which stopped me thinking.

Thank you Patricia and Menagerie.