Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Adam Tyson]

While those templates might be a little helpful, GGIBA003@FIU.EDU, I personally found them to be a little too empty and uncertain to be of much use, and thus not worth the time they took to create. I say this as an avid fan of doing templates, too - this game just doesn't really get much easier when you do them, in my opinion. For example, when the P/G block is in spaces 1 and 4, where do we put the LO block? It still has two options, and with one of them (LO in 2 and 3) the remaining variables are all pretty much random in the last three spaces. Something similar happens when P/G is in 3 and 6. In fact, the only template that locks down the placement of the LG block is when the P/G block is in 2 and 5, forcing LO to be between them. And of course every one of those templates leaves us wondering about the order of P and G, so a local question that places G or P in space 4 would still leave us guessing as to which template we would be in, since the other could be in space 1 or in space 7.

Then again, 4 templates for 7 questions, even when the templates are a little light on inferences, isn't bad, and you should be done with them fairly quickly, so it's not a huge loss of time. So while we might not recommend templates in this case, I'd say you aren't wrong for going down that path, and if they helped you finish the game quickly, confidently, and accurately, then more power to you!

[g_lawyered]

Adam,
I see exactly what you mean because only my template that had the P/G block in 2 and 5 was helpful since there was only 1 way to complete that template. However, the other templates were empty. How can I get better at ID which games only have 2 or 3 templates avaliable? Even after completing Lesson 9 LG HW, I still find myself not knowing 100% which games to try to draw Limited Solution sets and which games to not even bother attempting to try.
Thanks for your help!

[Adam Tyson]

I hate to sound like a total cliché , but the answer is practice! The more you play with these games and try templates, the more familiar you will get with the things that do and do not make for good template opportunities.

I suggest that you start attacking every game with the idea that it could turn out to be a template game, and search for something that would be the starting point for those templates, such as a variable that can only go in one of two spaces, or a big block of variables that must be in the same group, or a numeric distribution that will only work one of two ways. If you don't find any good starting points like that, it's probably not a template game and you should move forward with another approach.

But if you find something worth trying out, do it and see what happens! As you do, you will come to learn how to tell what will work and what won't, and you will gain more confidence in doing templates generally, knowing that when they are the right choice they are very, very powerful and worth every second you spend on them.

Embrace the templates, and they will reward you!