PT44.S3.G3 - a tour group plans to visit five

civnetn

https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-44-section-3-game-3/
I have a question relating to conditionals in grouping games.

Although this was a relatively simple game in that L and P are together and G and H are not together, rendering a limited number of combinations, the two conditional statements upon which the more difficult questions depended made the game significantly more challenging.

In the video explanation for this game, instead of diagramming the conditionals in the typical if---> then format, J.Y. instead quickly jotted down the resulting game boards for each conditional. In this sense, the game is unique in that the two conditionals provided actually resulted in two fully solved "worlds." Because this rarely happens in grouping games, I wasn't in the habit of looking to see if the conditionals resulted in solved worlds. What J.Y. does, makes the game significantly easier.

My question is this: Whenever we have conditional statements in a grouping game that result in a solved game-board, should we jot down the solved game board? Or should we wait to see if questions require it? I suppose that doesn't make much sense...maybe what I'm getting at is, HOW do we know when use this technique.

Either way, this was a very simple game, made difficult by conditionals. I'd like to know how to avoid making the error I made in the future. Thoughts?

runiggyrun

I think this comes down to JY's advice to always look how a new rule interacts with existing rules. That's exactly what JY is doing: writing down K(Monday) -->G(Tuesday) and immediately looking how that combines with the other rules. We already know that G and H are separated, taking up two days and that the (LP) group takes the third day, so now you know that G is taking Tuesday, K is on Monday and therefore LP have to be Wednesday. H can't be with G, so it's also on Monday, and that leaves S for Tuesday.
Same for the other conditional.

So, it's not so much that he's decided to write down a fully solved board for the conditional, but that he looked to see how it interacts with the other rules and realized that it results in a fully solved game board.

Incidentally, for me this game illustrated the power of the FoolProof method. I don't typically watch JY's explanations unless I'm really at loss for a game, but every time I do a repeat of the game I try to do the best job I can solving it (as opposed to just remembering how I solved it last time). At some point during my foolproof efforts it clicked for me that this is how you do this game most efficiently - not because I'd seen a similar game before, but because practicing countless games countless times I'd gotten better at quickly pushing rules together and the inference just jumped at me in a way it hadn't before.