Logic Games #1 - Game 11

[moshei24]

How would the setup for the 11th game in the first LG problem set be set up?

I got all the questions right, but it took too long and my setup was awful.

Thanks!

[moshei24]

And also, I asked this question before, but are the additional questions for lessons 9, 10, 11, and 12 more difficult ON AVERAGE than the ones in the book? It appears that most of them are more difficult than the ones in the book itself. I've noticed in general that as the question numbers get higher, the questions get more difficult. So if I am correct about that, please be honest with me, and let me know. It's a major confidence killer to be getting questions wrong, when they aren't considered difficult ones. And I don't get LR questions wrong often. So if these are more difficult on average, that's cool, and it would be very beneficial for me to know that.

Thanks.

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Moshei,

Those are actually different questions you have asked. Towards the end of the homeworks (higher question numbers), there are waves of more difficult questions. So, not every question is high difficulty, but there are definitely some. Plus, we tend to put a greater concentration of harder questions in the later lessons, when you are ready for them. Thus, at times there are hard section in the additional problems, but certainly not always.

Also, it would be really awesome if you separated out questions that are unrelated to each other into different posts.

Thanks!

[moshei24]

Sorry.

So last thing about that - are the ones that are additional questions going to have more waves of harder questions because they are higher numbers?

[Dave Killoran]

No, the distribution is not that rigid.

Thanks!

[Dave Killoran]

Returning to the original question, can you describe your setup for me?

Thanks!

[moshei24]

If not, then what does "Those are actually different questions you have asked. Towards the end of the homeworks (higher question numbers), there are waves of more difficult questions." mean? I'm confused.

And I'll post my setup a little bit later. I'm getting ready to take a practice LSAT, and I don't have it with me.

Thanks!

[Adam Tyson]

I'll apologize in advance - I'm not so good at using this forum to "draw" my diagrams, but I'll do my best.

My approach to this game, which may not be the optimal approach, was to use templates. My first step was to segregate my boaters into two subsets - Group A (Adults) consisting of FGH, and Group C (Children) consisting of VWXYZ. Next, I created two groups each with four spaces each (I did mine vertically, but horizontally works just as well), something like this:

___ ___
___ ___
___ ___
___ ___
_1_ _2_

I then blocked off the bottom "row" in my setup and set FGH off to the left of that row, telling me that I had to fill those two slots (one in each group) with an adult.

Next, the conditionals: F2 -> G2, and its contrapositive, G1 -> F1; and V1 -> W2 and the contrapositive, W1 -> V2.

Next, I dealt with X & Z - since they cannot be in the same boat, I used our "hurdling the uncertainty" principal and simply placed X/Z in a slot in Group 1 and Z/X in the corresponding slot in Group 2.

Finally, I thought about the inferences, and the first one I took note of was that if F & G end up in the same boat (as would happen any time F is in 2 or G is in 1 - see the conditionals), H would have to be in the other boat. That led me to add a rule - H2 -> F1 (because if F was in 2 with H, G would also have to be in 2 - no good), and also H1 -> G2 (same reasoning there). The other inference I made was that W and V could be in Group 2 together, but otherwise they have to be in separate groups, because either of them appearing in Group 1 forces the other into Group 2

At this point I thought a template approach was justified, because I had only a few ways to distribute my three adults, one slot in each group allotted to either X or Z, and only three ways to distribute W and V (both in 2, or W in 1 and V in 2, or V in one and W in 2). These combined restrictions all added up to me to a very restricted game. As it turns out, I was a bit surprised to find 6 templates (I had guessed before I began that there might be 4), but I was still able to set them all up and answer all the questions quickly and with confidence.

Rather than me doing it for you, try setting up the templates yourself, and report back on how it went. Start by seeing what happens when you put F in Group 2; then do the contrapositive and put G in 1 (and don't forget the variations available for W and V). Finally, try some variations with G in 2 and F in 1.

Hope that helps! I also hope some of my colleagues will chime in with their views on this game. While they worked out great for me, I'm not yet convinced that templates are truly optimal here, as the setup did take me a while.

Adam M.Tyson
PowerScore LSAT Instructor

[Dave Killoran]

If not, then what does "Those are actually different questions you have asked. Towards the end of the homeworks (higher question numbers), there are waves of more difficult questions." mean? I'm confused.

And I'll post my setup a little bit later. I'm getting ready to take a practice LSAT, and I don't have it with me.

Thanks!

I meant, the questions in this post are different from the original question you asked in your other post.

Thanks!