LSAT Tip of the Day*
By Wil Sharon Logic games tip: When you’re short on time and you can’t make any more inferences in a logic game, try to eliminate any answer choices that are essentially the same before making a guess. Even if you make no inferences whatsoever (hopefully this isn’t the case, but perhaps you get to the last game with only a minute left in the section), you can sometimes eliminate answers before guessing, merely because two or more are, for all intents and purposes, exactly the same. For example, if (a) is something like, “K must be fifth,” and (b) is something like, “G must be fifth,” and neither K nor G have any other rules qualifying them, these answer choices have no relevant difference. Because they contain no information that distinguishes them, they must both be wrong. It’s a simple idea, really; if two answers are the same and only one answer can be correct, neither of the two can be the right choice. A word of caution: Make sure that there is nothing distinguishing the two answers before you eliminate them. Even if it seems small or irrelevant at first glance, a rule like “H must come either before F or before G” means that G is not necessarily the same as K as far as the questions are concerned. The takeaway from this lesson should be that when you have to guess, eliminate all answers that are the same as other answers. Even if you don’t have time to set up a diagram or make inferences, there can never be two right answers, so if there are two letters that are treated the same by the rules, and they both appear as possible answer choices, they are both automatically wrong. Let’s look at an example. The rules: Six letters (T V W X Y Z) are placed, not necessarily in that order, on a line of six spaces exactly one time each. W must be before X W must be before Y Z is not last V and T must be next to each other The question: If W is third, which could be last? (a) Y (b) V (c) T (d) Z (e) W Even without making any deductions, we can use our rule to eliminate (b) and (c) immediately, because as far as we are concerned there is no difference between V and T. *Despite the (misleading) title, LSAT tips will not be given daily. Sorry.
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