Quick Tip: Take a Break!

You know those days where it feels like you’ve been studying forever, and reading one more Sufficient Assumption question would be enough to make you scream? When that happens, one of the best things you can do for yourself is take a break. I don’t just mean switching to a different tab on your computer or scrolling through TikTok—to really reset your mood, get out of your chair and away from screens for at least a few minutes. If you’re able to head outside for a walk around the block, go for it! If you prefer to stay indoors, try taking a couple of laps around your space or doing some stretches to get your blood flowing. Whatever the details, stepping away is a quick and easy, but powerful, tool to ground and refresh yourself. Next time you hit a rut, give it a try!

Discussion: Prioritizing LG Answer Choices

Imagine you’re working on a Logic Game, your setup is solid, but suddenly you run into a question you don’t have the answer to. Maybe it’s a tough Must Be False, maybe it’s a rule substitution—whatever the case, you’re realizing that you’ll just have to brute-force it and test every answer choice until you find the right one. Luckily, there are a couple of things you can do to prioritize the worlds you’re testing, and maybe even eliminate a few!

  • Look for Interchangeable Pieces

Interchangeable pieces can be floaters, or a pair of pieces affected by all the same rules in all the same ways; fundamentally, any two pieces which can freely trade positions with no impact on the rest of the board are interchangeable. If two answer choices are the same except for swapping out interchangeable pieces, that makes the answers themselves interchangeable. If one is true or false, the other one must also be, and you can’t have two right answers, so any pair of interchangeable answer choices can automatically be eliminated!

  • Look for Restricted Pieces

A piece is restricted when the rules of the game or its interactions with other pieces limit the number of spaces it can occupy. If you don’t want to count every possible placement, you can also use the rules that affect a piece as a rule of thumb. For example, if piece X is affected by three rules and piece Y is only affected by one, there are pretty good odds that X is more restricted. In general, answer choices involving more-restricted pieces are good candidates to test before those involving less-restricted ones.

  • Look for Impactful Pieces

Impactful pieces are a kind of an analogue to restricted pieces: rather than being limited in their placement, impactful pieces act to limit where other pieces can go. And in fact, their outsized impact on other pieces can sometimes be its own kind of limitation (for instance, if their placement would cause another piece to break a rule). Like restricted pieces, impactful pieces are a good candidate to test first.

Rather than going from A to E, eliminating interchangeable answers and testing restricted or impactful pieces first allows you to start with the answer choices most likely to be correct. Even for questions where your only option is to brute-force, taking a few seconds to eliminate and prioritize is a great way to save time and effort.