PT38.S2.G1 - a car drives into the center ring

Comments

• 1 Like

  Mellow_Z Alum Member

  April 2017 1997 karma

  I would agree that it is correct in stating that only R and Z can fill the first slot.
• 1 Like

  BinghamtonDave Alum Member ⭐ 🍌🍌

  April 2017 8716 karma

  You are correct in asserting that spot 1 is reserved for R or Z. There aren't any true floaters in this game. As far as splitting, one of the things I want to mention is that I personally would not split this game. Fluency and comfort in our initial diagram should be sufficient to answer the questions with a high degree of confidence. What I mean by this is as follows:

  

  We should strive to the level of understanding on games that one glance at this should yield for us inherent relationships and restrictions of the variables. What I mean by this is when we look at that diagram we should see that S can never come before R. R can never come after Y. In addition to these relationships, we should strive to see, automatically and without the assistance of a split (in my estimation) that S cannot never be in spot 2 for example.

  What I ask myself on these games is "what can I make work?" Meaning, while respecting the conditions we must fulfill, when a question asks me a CBT, what can I make work?

  So lets take a look at question 5. Placing Q as fifth means that W better not be in the first 4 spots. Why? Because Q as fifth necessarily implies that all 4 variables before Q must be placed before 5. There are 4 variables before Q: the placement of W in 1,2,3,4 messes up the validity of any world we construct when Q is 5th. Interestingly enough and a way that we can truly be in control of games when we review them is to come up with other must be false answer choices given the condition we are asked to fulfill: in this case Q in 5. Other MBF answer choice the LSAC could have placed here would be something along the lines of variables R/T/V/Z in anything beyond 4. This again would be MBF.

  Now, one last point on what you noticed about spot #1. Taking that a bit deeper, knowing that spot 1 can only be filled by Z or R, how else can we interpret that information? Take a look at question 3: here we are told that Z is in 7: by deduction we know that R must be in 1. So lets eliminate (A). Now with (R) in 1, there is also a deeper way of seeing the relationships with our initial diagram. With R in 1, we are limited in the extent to which we can push back variables T and V. Meaning with the placement of Z in 7th (which by the way pushes Q to 8, which now we can eliminate answer choice E) the latest we can push T is third. So we can eliminate B. The latest we can push back V is forth, so we can eliminate D.

  In summation: fluency with our initial diagram gleaned through practice, fool-proofing and analysis can allow us to be in command of the game and answer the questions in a timely manner. With full disclosure there are a variety of approaches to a game like this. some of these approaches might consider splitting, the above analysis is the way I personally in my prep would approach this particular game.

  I hope this helps
  David
• tanes256 Alum Member

  April 2017 2573 karma

  @Mellow_Z @BinghamtonDave thx for the thorough explanations! I answered 3 just as mentioned above. That along with what I described in 1 seemed like it should've been pointed out as an inference because it saved a lot of time. I see what you're saying about splitting the board as well. This was a super easy sequencing game. I was going to split until I noticed I didn't have enough info. I normally always lean toward splitting but I'll keep this in mind. Thx again!
• 1 Like

  Mellow_Z Alum Member

  April 2017 1997 karma

  @tanes256 said:
  @Mellow_Z @BinghamtonDave thx for the thorough explanations! I answered 3 just as mentioned above. That along with what I described in 1 seemed like it should've been pointed out as an inference because it saved a lot of time. I see what you're saying about splitting the board as well. This was a super easy sequencing game. I was going to split until I noticed I didn't have enough info. I normally always lean toward splitting but I'll keep this in mind. Thx again!

  Yeah you just gotta get used to what you're comfortable with. Some people might need to split the board to see this. But it is definitely beneficial to be able to keep it in your head (it'll save you a ton of time from having to solve each split on every question). If you run into a vastly more complex question it might be worth it to split to keep everything straight, but in this scenario it wouldn't be worth it.