Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Administrator]

Setup and Rule Diagram Explanation

This is a Basic Linear game: Balanced.

June 06_game#4_M12_L3_explanations_game#3_setup_diagram_1.png

The last three rules form a powerful sequential relationship that largely controls the placement of variables in the game. While you could show all of the Not Laws that result from the sequence on your diagram, to do so would not be a valuable use of your time; the sequence provides enough visual information so that you can rely upon it without drawing our every Not Law. The one inference we have drawn out on the diagram is that O must be ranked seventh or eighth (the two blocks push O into one of the last two spaces).

[Diaysha]

How is O given the possibility to be in position 7, if there are 7 variables before it?

[Kristina Moen]

Diaysha,

Welcome to the Forum! There is no inherent order between H_J and K _ _ L. Thus, they could be nested! So you could have HKJ_L or K_HLJ. That means there have to be at least five variables before O. But with the rule that F/G is 1, then there have to be at least six variables before O. Thus, the earliest O can go is 7.

You will often see these types of block rules on basic linear games. The key is to understand how they can interact and overlay.

Hope that helps!

[laurat]

Would this be a good game for templates? I couldn't find a way to do it in a reasonable time frame without them, and there are only four.

[Robert Carroll]

laurat,

Would you be defining templates based on the positions of H and K (and all inferences following from those)? If so, there would still be some uncertainty in templates with respect to F, G, M, and sometimes O (if the template leaves two spaces for O). That's not necessary a bad thing, as templates inherently leave something open (otherwise, they're full possibilities), but what the templates would be giving you would be the relation of the two blocks to each other. Instead of writing templates out, you can get most of the benefit of templates with much less of the work if you can infer that the two blocks must "interlock" with each other, as otherwise there's no room for F/G to be first and O to be after both blocks. Thus, the key inference to make is that either the "free" space between H and J is occupied by K, or the "free" space right before L is occupied by H.

Robert Carroll

[goldol1021]

Under the last one, could you mark out that H K J, and L couldn't be last cause they come before O?

[Adam Tyson]

You absolutely could do that, goldol1021! The only things that could be last are F, G, and O. We didn't do those not-laws because starting down that road can lead to a lot more of them, and probably a lot of wasted time. K, for example, cannot be 8th, 7th, 6th, or 5th; L cannot be 2nd, 3rd, 4th, or 8th; and so on. When you have this many restrictions (caused by the two blocks), it starts to become less efficient to mark all the places they cannot be, and more efficient to start thinking about the very few places they could be. I've sometimes done this game with a templates approach based on the placement of the two blocks, and found that to be worthwhile despite the time it takes to set them up, but that's not absolutely required here.

Not-laws are great when there are a relatively small number of them, but when they start to proliferate they can end up being more trouble than they are worth, sucking up a lot of our time and cluttering up the diagram.