Eight students in a line

Question

The eight students filed into the classroom. The first thing they noticed was that the eight seats had been arranged in a line. The second thing they noticed was that the blackboard had some writing on it:

• Eric must sit 7 seats from Gus
• Cam, Des and Eric must not sit next to each other, and they also must sit in that order (either left to right or right to left)
• Finn must be at most 5 seats from Eric and must also be at least 3 seats away
• Des must sit 2 seats left from Emu
• Dilip must sit one seat to the right of Gemma

After a few minutes of moving around they finally found their seats. When the teacher finally came in he put on a song for the students.

What was the song?

HINT:

After you get the sequence, don't only consider the first letter

Second hint:

You need to use the clues (the 5 dot points) more than once

Answer 1

We first compute the correct order, which is

Eric, Gemma, Dilip, Des, Finn, Emu, Cam, Gus (1)

Giving the clue

CAPS NUMS (final letters of names) (2)

which is mentioned here.

So, if we

take all CAPS and NUMS from the clues on the blackboard

we will get:

E7GCDEF5E3D2EDG. (3) Here, each number tells how many times the preceding note is repeated.

So, the final answer is:

EEE EEE EGCDE FFFF FEE EDDE DG (4)

Credit for providing the clue in step (2) belongs to @IAmInPLS, who wrote this answer.

Answer 2

-Partial answer-

They are placed like this:

Eric - Gemma - Dilip - Des - Finn - Emu - Cam - Gus

Because:

First line tells us that Eric and Gus must be placed at the two extremities:
Eric __ __ __ __ __ __ Gus
Fifth line: Gemma and Dilip must sit next to each other, in this order.
Third line: Finn can be placed at three positions only:
Eric __ __ Finn Finn Finn __ Gus.
Then Des takes place two sits left from Emu. We combine this, with the fact that we need Eric, Des and Cam in this order.

First try:
Eric Des __ Emu Finn Cam __ Gus: can't fit Gemma and Dilip.
So the solution has to be:
Eric - Gemma - Dilip - Des - Finn - Emu - Cam - Gus

So this gives us:

the musical notes E G D D F E C G

If we consider the last letters, we get:

capsnums, or CAPS NUMS

but I can't see what to do with it for now.

@Sconibulus noticed that.

all the numbers used are prime: 1, 2, 3, 5, 7 but is it relevant?

Answer 3

1. Eric must sit 7 seats from Gus

2. Cam, Des and Eric must not sit next to each other, and they also must sit in that order (either left to right or right to left)

3. Finn must be at most 5 seats from Eric and must also be at least 3 seats away

4. Des must sit 2 seats left from Emu

5. Dilip must sit one seat to the right of Gemma

Reasoning:

According to Info 1, Eric and Gus must be at the opposite ends.

According to Info 2, Des is between Cam and Eric, and shouldn't sit next to either, so he could sit anywhere from seat 3 to 6. Still, he can't actually sit on seat 6 considering he has to sit 2 seats to Emu's left, so it's only seats 3 to 5. Also, that means the one out of Cam or Eric sitting to his right must be at least 3 seats away from him, with Emu sandwiched between the both.

Therefore, Eric and Cam must be at least 2+3=5 seats away from each other. At most (if Cam is one seat away from Eric's opposite end - Gus) it's 6. Gemma and Dilip must also be between them, because if Gus and the two are "outside", Eric and Cam can only be 4 seats away from each other at most, which is a no-no. To keep their distance between the acceptable limits, they should sit that way: (Eric/Cam)-Gemma-Dillip-Des-X-Emu-(Cam/Eric). Since Finn can't be outside either given Info 3, X must be him, making Eric the one to Cam's left.

Who sits where?

Eric-Gemma-Dilip-Des-Finn-Emu-Cam-Gus

About the song:

Note that no one's initial is a letter following G. When we write them down, we get the musical notes of EGDDFECG. Taking the number of the syllables in their names into account, it becomes EEGGDDDFEECG. When I did a painstaking Musipedia search using the string e'4 e'4 g'4 g'4 d'4 d'4 d'4 f'4 e'4 e'4 c'4 g'4 in the Javascript piano section, I found a song that fits well enough in a way.

Note: I didn't steal the syllable idea from Arth even though it's probably the same.