#13 - Global

[Administrator]

(The complete setup for this game can be found here: lsat/viewtopic.php?t=11242)

A broad could be true, meaning I expect four answers to clearly violate rules. Let's see which do. (A) is out because L can't be in 3. (C) is out because S is always before M. (D) is out because S can't be in 5. And (E) is out because if S and T are in 4 and 5 there's no room for both M and V after S (only 6 is open). So it's (B).

[concrottrox11@gmail.com]

Why is V allowed to be in spot 3 if M isnt allowed to be in spot 2 because of the S-M-V rule?

[Adam Tyson]

You've mis-diagrammed that rule, concrottrox11. The rule is that S is before both M and V, but that tells us nothing about whether M is before V or if it's the other way around. As long as S is before both of those variables, that rule is satisfied, regardless of what order M and V are in. So the following solution is one of a few that would be acceptable:

LSVTHM

Of course, this order isn't required, and in another scenario you could have M somewhere before V. The point is that the rule about S leaves the M/V order uncertain and flexible.

[nstiell]

Hi,
Thinking about the best way to solve this without losing too much time, is the best way to draw mini diagrams for each contender option?

[Luke Haqq]

Hi nstiell!

The short answer to your question is yes. It'd take too long to diagram out every answer choice for every question. If the test were untimed, this would probably be a great aid in figuring out the correct answers. But given the time constraint, a more feasible goal is to diagram out only whichever answer choices you've narrowed down as contenders.

This question in particular is a could be true question. There are some general strategies that one can think about on this type. An initial instinct that is often helpful upon seeing this question type on a game is to look for a random variable--given its nature as a random, that type of variable often will come into play on a could be true question. In this game, however, there aren't any random variables.

Beyond looking for randoms, another strategy is to look for variables with lots of constraints attached to them. Since one answer choice could be true, this means is that four of the answer choices cannot be true. In this game, H, S, M, and V are variables with more constraints (these occur in 2 rules) than others (L and T only occur in one rule). This isn't a huge difference so might not help narrow down answer choices. Related to this, one can also look for specific slots (here, the base is days from June 1st through June 6th) that are more constrained or more open than others. In this game, for example, S, M, and V cannot be on the first, so it must instead be H, L, or T.

Finally, those are suggestions more in the abstract about how to narrow down the answer choices to contenders on a could be true question, but part of why they don't necessarily get to the right one on their own in this game is because of the conditional, contingent reasoning in the game's 2nd and 4th rules. It's not necessarily possible to determine what could be true in the abstract, without seeing how those rule can or cannot play out. Here, with S and V on the 2nd and 3rd as in answer choice (B), we can start with knowing that the 1st must be H/L/T. If H is 1st, though, then this violates the 4th rule, so H is out. T also couldn't be 1st--if we started with T, S, V, this would violate the 4th rule. But L could work in the 1st spot. If L is 1st, we could have: L, S, V, T, H, M, or L, S, V, T, M, H, or L, S, V, M, T, H.