June 2007 LSAT, Logic Game 1, Question 5

Another general must be true question. We already came up with one general deduction in question 2 (“2 must be early on”). So, that deduction doesn’t work here. Instead, it’s worthwhile to skim the answers and see what the answers look like generally.

You are not trying to solve the question on this step. Just look through to get a sense of them, then return to the main diagram. From doing that, you can see these answers are all about distance between letters.

Next, look to your main diagram and see which variables have fixed positions:

1, 2 and 4 have somewhat fixed positions in at least one of the diagrams. So you should look at answers which use two of those variables. That’s B and E.

B obviously doesn’t have to be true. In the second scenario, 2 is 1st, and 1 isn’t beside 2, so they won’t be exactly one digit apart.

That leaves E. Let’s try drawing 2 and 4 as far apart as we can. In scenario 2, they are beside each other, so we’ll have to use scenario 1. We get this:

E is CORRECT. As you can see, the gap is at most two spaces.

You should read the other answers, but you don’t need to put effort into solving them, since E is consistent with the prephrase. When you review the game afterwards, it is helpful to solve the other answers, but in timed conditions you only need to glance at them to make sure they don’t seem obviously right.

A is wrong for the same reason as B: in scenario one, we see that 1 is first, and 0 isn’t beside 1. So this answer doesn’t need to be true.

Both C and D can be disproved by placing 3 last. This is allowed in both scenarios, and it means 3 is three spaces away from 1 or 2. And we can easily obey rule four by putting 0 third in both cases.