For how many employees can the scores at the end of Quarter 3 be determined with certainty?

Let's Denote Asha, Bunty, Chintu, Dolly, Eklavya, and Falguni as A, B, C, D, E and F respectively for easy usage. The values in the brackets are the ratings obtained in that quarter, and the values outside are the cumulative ratings after that Quarter.

Putting all the given information in the table, we get,

B came from Elite to Novice after Q1, and B cannot go back to Elite after Q2 and come back to Novice after Q3 because B came to Novice in Q1, and A came to Novice in Q3, so C has to come to Novice after Q3 to be present in Novice at the start of Q4 as per the table. Therefore, we can conclude that C came to Novice after Q3, and B stayed in Novice in Q3 as well, receiving a rating of 3 in Q3. Similarly, D cannot go to Elite after Q1 and come back after Q2 because we already know that A is coming to Novice after Q2. So, we can conclude that D stayed in Novice during Q2 as well. We are also given that A and F received the same rating during all the quarters, and we know that the rating of D is 2 in Q3, so we can conclude its rating to be 2 in all the quarters. For B to come to Novice after Q1, it must receive a rating of 1 in Q1.

We are also given that F has the same rating across all the quarters, and it has to be either 1 or 3, as D already has a rating of 2 in Q1 in that group. If the rating of F is 1, then it will stay in Novice in quarter 2 and also will get a rating of 1 in Q2, which makes the cumulative score 2. But we know that both E and F are going to elite after quarters 1 and 2 in some order, and if the cumulative rating of F is 2 at the end of Q2, then it is not possible for it to go to elite after Q2, as there are members with ratings higher than 2 in Novice after Q2.

Therefore, for all conditions to be satisfied, the rating of F must be 3 in all quarters, and F advances to Elite after Q1 and remains there. Also, we can conclude that E goes to Elite after Q2. Putting all the information in the table, we get,

Now, if we look at the Elite table, we know that A and C received 2 and 3 in some order in Q1 and 1 and 2 in Q2 in some order.

We know that A goes to Novice from Elite after Q2, so the cumulative rating of A must either be less than C after Q2 or equal to C , and the rating of A in Q2 is less than C. These are the two possibilities.

If A received a rating of 3 in Q1, then C gets 2 in Q1. For A to get to Novice after Q2, it must obtain a rating of 1 in Q2, so that it will have a cumulative rating of 4 after 2 quarters which is same as the cumulative rating of C after 2 quarters and because C gets a rating of 2 and A gets a rating of 1 in Q2, A goes to Novice and C stays in elite even with the same cumulative rating.

If A received a rating of 2 in Q1, then C gets 3 in Q1. For A to get to Novice after Q2, it must obtain a rating of 1 in Q2, so that it will have a cumulative rating of 3 after 2 quarters, which is less than the cumulative rating of C after 2 quarters. If it gets a rating of 2 in Q2, then its cumulative becomes 4, which would be the same as C in that case, and because the rating in Q2 would be less for C in that case, it gets demoted to Novice, which is not the case. So, in the case of A getting 2 in Q1, it must get 1 in Q2.

After Q2, E and C will either have the same cumulative score or C will have 1 point more than E's cumulative score. For E to remain in Elite even after Q3, it must get a rating of 2 points in Q3, and C must get a rating of 1 point.

Putting all the calculated values, we get the final table as,

The cumulative score of 4 employees can be determined with certainty at the end of quarter 3.

Hence, the correct answer is 4.