Why do this problem

Possible approach

Key questions

In what ways could you record this problem?
Would a picture help, or pieces of paper, or a table.....

Possible extension

Suggest that the children make up their own similar question.
You may choose to restrict the number of seated friends to four in the first instance. Making up a question is not difficult - the challenging part is in deciding which information, and how much of it, to give to make the question solvable but not trivial.

Possible support
In order to incluide as many children as possble, you could have some additional clues available, which the children could choose to use if they need them.In this way all children do the same problembut with varying levels of support.