PT72.S4.G4 - the employees of the summit company

blah170blah

http://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-72-section-4-game-4/
So I was blowing through the games section of section 4 and then I got to this last game with about 13-15 minutes to spare. I saw that there were only two rules given and knew that I had to make some deductions ahead of time -- except I didn't know what they were. I tried to do as many questions as I could but realized I was missing something crucial (for instance, I saw that almost every answer choice had something about K-L but I couldn't tell if this was significant -- turns out, it kind of is). I missed every single question minus the elimination question for this game.

I'm curious as to what I could have done differently if I got this on the real test. Paging experts here: what would you do if you saw this game and realized you were missing the key deduction? How would you get yourself to see the game a bit differently?

jdawg113

When I read everything for this game I pretty much knew I shouldnt even bother looking to set something up... Nothing even close came to mind so just went right into the questions and kind of tried to figure it out on question by question basis... was very odd for sure but kinda liked it

jdawg113

to answer, if no set up becomes clear after a short time, I just forget even trying and see what the questions provide and wing it and try to make whatever connections I can as I go

blah170blah

The thing that really tripped me up was #20. I just didn't understand the fact that it was imperative that M had to pass off to J especially because #21 seemed like a direct violation of the rules. I understand that hypotheticals are meant to introduce a new variable and we're required to adjust to the new situation but I didn't know how to adjust to #21 since we are told in the description that everybody has to work.

littlesnickers

I definitely struggled with this game too, but it helped to set it up like this:

First I wrote out all the possible transfers, in order of game pieces i.e. J K L M and which other ones they can transfer to:
JK JL
KL KM
etc.

When I got to question 20 I realized I needed a bit more, so rewrote the possible transfers in the flipped configuration i.e. which ones can transfer to each of J K L M:
MJ
JK LK MK
JL KL ML
KM LM

This helps to see the board from either direction, if that makes sense. So it's clear who can be on both the left and right of each piece. Then from that set up, you can see that only M can be on the left side of J, so you can scratch out M being on the left side of K and L.

brna0714

Okay, so I am by no means a game expert but after I got over the initial "wtf" factor, I just decided to create at least one board that satisfied the rules.

Maybe that's key for unusual games? Put something down to try to figure things out.

After creating the initial scenario, I was sort of able to wrap my brain around the situation. I stumbled across the M-J inference using that initial scenario which helped me with the remainder.

I got everything right on this one except the last question. I looked at a couple of the answers and figured it was going to take awhile so I decided to go back and pick up a substitution question I had skipped earlier in the section.

Dr. Yamata

Yeah, it sounds like you're not so much worried about how to solve this particular game as you are how to address odd games if they come up on test day. Since PT 72 pimp slapped me in a similar way, I came up with a few strategies:

-Study all the weird games. With 70x4 games in existence, it's highly unlikely that they can pop a game that will not be similar to ANY previous games. This method sucks and may not be appropriate for last-minute, but it helped me

-Hypotheticals.. I think a previous poster mentioned doing boards that satisfy the rules. This is the definition of a hypothetical. This will help you see how the rules work together, and may very well give the key inference. This is how I derived the inference that M has to pass to J.

-Use the questions with additional premises first. This is an under-rated method that I've seen used in other prep companies' strategies that I think really helps on games you can't figure out. Hit the questions that give specific information first, and save the "what could be true?" general type questions for afterwards. In general, the could be/must be trues are best solved brute forcing (IMO) if you have no other clue, but perhaps your hypothetical boards and boards from questions with premises will help you knock out 1 or 2 answers. The reason I say these are best brute-forced is because you could (it has happened to me) sit there spending a minute making 3 hypothetical boards that have NO relevance to the question. Yes, it's possible. So if you have zero clue, why not start hacking away at the possibilities they do give you?

blah170blah

These are all great suggestions! I guess my point though was more that I couldn't even create hypotheticals in the first place (like #21). I couldn't even devise how #21 was possible and therefore couldn't really apply the rules in a meaningful way.