Game Boards

fuzzy228

J.Y.
Can you please give me some insight on when to split the game board. As well as making inferences, I am really struggling with this. I tend to try to fit all the rules together at once on the master game board, thus, once I get to the questions I have very little room left to see the possibilities.
Thanks.

Pacifico

J.Y. doesn't really answer questions anymore since they've shifted to allowing the community to help one another.

Unfortunately there is no hard and fast rule and it becomes more of an intuitive thing with practice. While rules that appear to split the board into two can serve as good leads, it can also depend what the questions are asking for. If you have several MBT questions then you likely need to split, but if you have a lot of situational questions then it really depends on how much you can figure out from the rules alone. When in doubt, try a quick split and see if it allows you to make more inferences. If it doesn't and there just too many scenarios and a lot of situational questions then you just have to make new boards for each question.

Also, there has been some recent discussion on this as it is one of the more popular topics on here. I'm on my phone so I can't see the forum while posting this but if you look further down on the forum or within the LG forum there are a few discussions already going about this.

blah170blah

Here's one: http://7sage.com/discussion/#/discussion/comment/17563

Pacifico

Thanks @blah170blah !

fuzzy228

I will try that approach. Thanks for the information.

Aiesha G.

@fuzzy228 you are definitely NOT alone! I struggle with this as well and while I am still able to figure out the correct answer most of the time, not splitting the board game board has proven to be a huge time sink in some cases. After playing a few games, I do agree that it seems very intuitive. I get the feeling that whenever you form a "chain" of rules and that chain can occupy two or more places, it is probably best to split the board. Of course, I am still very early in my studies so please do listen to some of the more experienced peers, but from what I have encountered in my studies, the idea of placing the chain in separate gameboards makes it a LOT more clear. If all else fails, if you are looking at your main board and you are confused because you have grouped entities that can go in a number of different places, split it and see if it helps.

Snowball

Purely analytical deduction works better for me. Alternatively, you may want to get the LSAT SuperPrep to see how the test makers solve logic games. I see logic game as a misnomer while almost no one still uses its official name: analytical reasoning. The split-game-boards approach is like a programming style iteration, which, I think, does NOT align well with the essence of analytical reasoning. FYI

Pacifico

I find that analytical deduction works best for me on questions with "could be" qualifiers in them, and to a lesser extent the "must be" qualifiers because in the former case, anything that moves is a candidate and everything else needs no consideration, while the opposite is true in the latter case. This helps to often knock out 2-4 ACs right off the bat and is a major reason that my timing has greatly improved.

Aiesha G.

@Pacifico when you say in CBT questions anything that moves is a candidate what exactly are you referring to? Are you speaking of the entities that are mentioned in the rules?

Pacifico

Let's use a really simple example of a sequencing game with seven slots. If you have elements A, B, C, D, E, F, and G and you know that the first five of those go in order in slots 3-7 and then you have an F/G and a G/F slot in 1 and 2, then everything in slots 3-7 MUST be true. So if a question asks what could be true or could be false, you should know immediately that they have to be talking about G or F (and/or slots 1 and 2) since they are the only elements that can move (or slots that whose elements can change). This will help you quickly eliminate any ACs about elements A-E or 3-7 or quickly find the AC with G or F with 1 or 2. I hope this helps, if you still have questions let me know and I'll pick out some games to show it in action.

Aiesha G.

I had to read it a few times but I think I understand. I am guessing that there were some rules that linked to make the A_B_C_D_E chain and that one of the rules restricted the chain to position 3. Or that elements F/G were "locked" to positions 1 and You didn't explicitly state what those rules were that's why I was a little confused.

Pacifico

I think you're reading a little too much into my example. It doesn't matter what the specific rules are that got you into the situation. Instead, just think of the elements in terms of concrete versus fluid. If you know that 5 of 7 items in a game are locked in concrete (all assigned a space), then you know that since their assignments don't change, then anything you say about them either MUST be true, or MUST be false. There is nothing about these items that COULD be true because they are locked in concrete to their given spaces and so it has become a part of their identity.

On the flip side if your 2 remaining items are liquid and can therefore switch places between slots 1 and 2, then there are statements about them that COULD be true, or COULD be false (e.g.- G could be in 1, F could be in 2, etc.). Rather than spending time reflecting on ACs that address elements A-E or slots 3-7, you should know what and where your target is.

Not to complicate things too much but there are caveats to the second group here. On some curvebreaker LG questions (if there is such a thing), an AC could say it MUST be false that G is in 3 (which you know is correct because 3 is always occupied). Conversely, an AC could say it MUST be true that G is not in 3. However, the answers are not usually worded in that manner, though it can happen. That being said, by being generally knowledgeable about what can and can't move, you should be able to build up an intuition for these situations.

As another somewhat related example, if you only have one or maybe two floaters in an LG, then those are always great candidates for COULD be true questions, because by their nature, in general, they COULD be anywhere that is not taken up by other elements. There is nothing MUST about them, if you will.

Hope this helps clear it up a bit. If I've confused you more let me know and I'll try to break it down further.