Finding Floaters & Rewriting Rules?

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• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  April 2018 edited April 2018 3072 karma

  I always find the wild variables. Usually a good grasp on wild variables is the key to answering at least one question, if not the whole game. To identify wild variables, identify variables that are not included in any given rules or inferences. I consider the wild variable an inference, and so I separate them from the given rules with a line break. I label them, "X=wild." This works for me and takes no time at all.

  At the beginning of my preparation, and for a long while after that, I regularly used my fingers to cover certain things on my game boards. This helped declutter my mind of visual stimuli and so helped me to be able to better understand the relevant subject matter.
• CRLSUUUU Member

  April 2018 162 karma

  @goingfor99th I see, by wild variables, thats the floaters right? so instead of circling it you would actually write them down below your rules？
• goingfor99th Free Trial Member

  April 2018 edited April 2018 3072 karma

  @CRLSUUUU said:
  @goingfor99th I see, by wild variables, thats the floaters right? so instead of circling it you would actually write them down below your rules？

  Yeah, that's what I call them. Yes, that's what I do with them.
• 1 Like

  Sami Yearly + Live Member Sage ⭐ 7Sage Tutor

  April 2018 10806 karma

  @CRLSUUUU said:
  Hey guys,

  I was wondering if anyone has tips for LG on finding the floaters when you're just hit with a bunch of game pieces, usually like 8+ and then a bunch of rules that may or may not have mentioned these pieces. I know JY says to find the floaters each game, but I find that I'm spending more than I probably should to do this step each game, so if anyone has tips..

  If you are spending a long time finding floaters, one thing you can do is put a check mark next to each variable as you represent the rules. At the end, whichever variable doesn't have the check mark is your floater.

  In addition, in many of the games, for questions you have to go back to the rules and see if they've been rendered irrelevant or if they trigger, on the videos JY just crosses out etc. But ofc we can't do that on paper, it was suggested that we cover it up with our hands but I find that's unhelpful esp when there's a bunch of rules. So does anyone have tips for some sort of systematic way to keep track of whether each rule was triggered/irrelevant for each question (when the question requires you to go back to the rules ofc not EVERY question) so that we don't just have every rule still staring at us while trying to eliminate those that don't matter. I do try to pare down rules and write them next to the Q when there aren't that many, so again, this Q is more for those games where there are just a ton of rules and you can't afford the time..

  thanks so much in advance!

  It's really rare that you will have so man rules left over if you are representing them efficiently. For example, rules can be represented by writing them down or on master game board or sub game boards. Cross out the ones you have represented visually. If you have sub-game boards, not all of the rules written are applicable to each sub game boards. You can write next to the sub-game boards each rule that is still active for it and once that's done, cross that rule out the master list. That way, at the end you wont have that many rules to run through for each scenario.

  If it does happen to be the game where a lot of rules are still active and cannot be represented visually, see what rule is first triggered by the local question and if that doesn't help find the answer, work the rules one by one from top to bottom. This eliminates stress of forgetting a rule. As you discover inferences based on each rule, make sure to write inferences on your board for that question as well. Don't hold them in your memory.
• CRLSUUUU Member

  May 2018 162 karma

  @Sami Those are great tips, thank you!