There's no question that this is a very, VERY hard game, meercat44! It certainly doesn't help that the first question doesn't give us any information about the order in which the four employees selected their offices, so we have to "brute force" our way through the answer choices to figure that order out. That's a common characteristic of a lot of pattern games - there's often very few inferences and few or no shortcuts, often very little to even put in a diagram, so you just have to charge into the questions and run every answer through the rules to see how they shake out.
My approach to this game was to first test out a few possible orders for the four employees to select their offices, to see if any patterns emerged. For example, I started by putting them in the order we were given: JLPT. If that is the order, then J will get his first choice, Y. L goes second, and his first choice, X, is still available, so he gets that. Two happy employees each got what they wanted most - hooray! Now it's P's turn, and although his first choice, Y, is gone, his second choice, Z, is still up for grabs. Not bad for P. T goes last, and since every other option has been taken, he is stuck with W, his last choice. Oh well, too bad, so sad. Here's what that might look like visually:
JLPT
YXZW
Now I try another order. I noticed that L is the only one who doesn't put W in last place, so I want to see what happens when he goes last. From the many orders I could choose, I randomly select TPJL, and here's how that shakes out:
TPJL
XYZW
Interesting! L went last, but got his third choice office! I can see now that L will NEVER get his last choice, because even if he goes last, his third choice, W, will always still be available, because nobody else will ever pick it unless there is nothing else left. I expect that inference to help me answer at least one question, because that's how LSAC likes to play!
One more sort-of-random order, as I am starting to realize that there are way too many possible orders to pick from, since there are no restrictions - none! - on who goes when. My math background, such as it is, tells me that there are actually 24 possible orders (4 choices for who goes first, times 3 for who goes second, times 2 for who goes third, times 1 for who goes last = 24 orders). But, I want to try one more, because I noticed that in both my previous two scenarios the first two people to pick each got their first choice. What happens if the first two both want the same office first? I see that with T and L, so I am going to try LTJP:
LTJP
XYZW
L went first and got his first choice, T went second and got his second choice, J went third and got his third choice, and P went last and got his last choice. Very tidy! I see that W got picked last again, and no surprise there - everybody hates it and has it last, except L, who will also get it if he goes last. Could W ever go earlier than last? L would have to pick it, and it would have to be third, with X and Z gone. I can't see any way to make that happen, because both J and P want Y and one of them will surely pick it before L gets a chance to go third. Another inference - W is ALWAYS picked last!
That is a lot of work, to be sure, but in the scope of the section this game would probably be skipped and saved for last, and if the rest of the section is relatively easy (which it is), you should have plenty of time to tackle it, and there really isn't a much better or more efficient way to do it with this one. So, invest the time to get a good feel for the game, try to make an inference or two along the way, and then head into the questions with the expectation that you will be doing a lot of work and testing a lot of answer choices.
I'm going to start another thread for the list question on this game, so I'll send you over there for further discussion:
lsat/viewtopic.php?f=56&t=17225
Give it a try and have fun!
