25 Horses

Mr. Sreenivasan had been to a horse race. He enjoyed watching the race and after that met his favorite horse rider. They both had a conversation for about ten minutes and became very good friends. They used to meet on the eve of every day. Once while they were having a stroll in a park, the horse rider asked Mr. Sreenivasan a question. The question was this: “There are 25 horses. In a race, a maximum of five horses can participate. The top three horses in a race can be identified by the order in which the horses arrive at the finishing line. There will not be any ties. Now, find the top three horses in minimum number of races.” Mr. Sreenivasan took 25 minutes to solve this question.

Let us see how much time you would take to solve the problem.