LSAT Forum
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- john.o.wray
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Vinny Gambini
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- Joined: February 08th, 2012
Q9
Wow, this game was hard-- I'd heard about it before and it lived up to its billing-- I finished in 10:50, -1, (#9) but was hoping to get some more evaluation of how exactly the best way to attack a game like this is.
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- ohthatpatrick
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Atticus Finch
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Re: Q9
Hey, there.
In terms of discussing the initial diagram/setup, I'll leave that to this thread:
diagram-t416.html
Suffice it to say, we all agree that what makes this game really hard is that there are actually TONS of legal permutations with all these ingredients. So there aren't any deductions that help narrow things down too much.
In games such as these in which there are so many ways to make a scenario work, we really want to go to the questions as soon as possible, be willing to write out quick scenarios to verify that a given idea is possible, and be ready to use those test scenarios on other questions to get some quick eliminations.
For #9, I would start by seeing what answers I can eliminate from previous work. So far I have a couple scenarios to look back on: answer (B) from #7 and the scenario I used to get through #8:
SS | SS | ___ | L L | ___
f f | f f | ......|m m | ....
(the final L/f could go in #3 or 5)
So using these scenarios as ammunition, let's look at #9's answers and see if we have counterexamples.
(B) is gone because in #7, we didn't have any males alone. (D) is gone because in #7, we didn't have any male lizards. (E) is gone because in #8 we didn't have any male snakes.
So the only answers I need to actually consider are (A) and (C).
(A) says at least one female will be alone. (C) says at least one lizard will be alone.
Both are initially tempting because there are 5 females, and 3 lizards. Since there are odd numbers of them, and we can only put two per habitat, one will be a straggler.
Can we pair up the leftover female with a male? Yes, as long as it's not the dreaded female snake / male lizard combo (we can pair up a male snake with a female lizard).
Can we pair up the leftover lizard with a snake? No, that breaks the 2nd rule. So (C) must be true.
Hope this helps.
In terms of discussing the initial diagram/setup, I'll leave that to this thread:
diagram-t416.html
Suffice it to say, we all agree that what makes this game really hard is that there are actually TONS of legal permutations with all these ingredients. So there aren't any deductions that help narrow things down too much.
In games such as these in which there are so many ways to make a scenario work, we really want to go to the questions as soon as possible, be willing to write out quick scenarios to verify that a given idea is possible, and be ready to use those test scenarios on other questions to get some quick eliminations.
For #9, I would start by seeing what answers I can eliminate from previous work. So far I have a couple scenarios to look back on: answer (B) from #7 and the scenario I used to get through #8:
SS | SS | ___ | L L | ___
f f | f f | ......|m m | ....
(the final L/f could go in #3 or 5)
So using these scenarios as ammunition, let's look at #9's answers and see if we have counterexamples.
(B) is gone because in #7, we didn't have any males alone. (D) is gone because in #7, we didn't have any male lizards. (E) is gone because in #8 we didn't have any male snakes.
So the only answers I need to actually consider are (A) and (C).
(A) says at least one female will be alone. (C) says at least one lizard will be alone.
Both are initially tempting because there are 5 females, and 3 lizards. Since there are odd numbers of them, and we can only put two per habitat, one will be a straggler.
Can we pair up the leftover female with a male? Yes, as long as it's not the dreaded female snake / male lizard combo (we can pair up a male snake with a female lizard).
Can we pair up the leftover lizard with a snake? No, that breaks the 2nd rule. So (C) must be true.
Hope this helps.
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