Brute forcing

MTreigys

Is anyone else every afraid/hate it when they have to seemingly brute force questions? It makes me feel like I messed up gravely on something and I start to panic

redwolf90

Yes. But I don't know what to do about it.

Matt Sorr

Remember, some questions basically have to be brute forced. Watch JY's explanation and if he brute forced it as well, odds are you didn't do anything wrong.

As for what to do about brute forcing, the best strategy, from what I've seen, is to do two things: First, skim the answer choices to see if anything obvious sticks out. For instance, you may have a "must be false" question in a grouping game that, at first glance, seems like you must brute force it because you have a relatively open-ended board. Sometimes, though, you may have a rule that simply states something like "T can't be in group 3." Then, there may be an answer choice that says something like "R and T are both in group 3." If that answer choice was towards the bottom of the answer choices, you may have ate up a minute or two working your way down to it. If you had skimmed, however, you may have gotten the correct answer in roughly 10 seconds. If a quick skim doesn't help you, the next best tactic is to be strategic about which ACs you try out. So, for example, you may have a game with two floaters. Let's say they're variables "G" and "H." Both variables have the exact same restraints on them, meaning, in effect, they're "identical" game pieces. Perhaps you're asked a question like, "Which one of the following variables can't be in position 5?" If you see both G and H listed in the answer choices, then you can cross them out with 100% confidence because if one of them is correct, the other would have to be correct.

I hope this helps some!

Hal Incandenza

I think Matt is spot on! In my experience, 40-50% of brute force questions actually have a really
Obvious answer choice if you think about them briefly. For the others, you have to work quickly and accurately, which is difficult but not at all an indication that you’re doing anything wrong.