LSAT 24, Game 4 Setup, Antibiotics Diets and Physical Therapies, LSATHacks

LG Game 4 Setup, by LSATHacks

Game Setup

This is a grouping game. It looks open ended, but it’s quite restricted. It shows the importance of trying to combine rules before starting the questions.

We have three variables of each type and it’s very important to draw those so you can refer to them quickly, or to memorize them.

Notice that earlier letters in the alphabet go together. E.g. A is with the earliest letters, P is with the latest.

We need exactly five. The first rule says we can’t have all three antibiotics. We can either have one or two. We have exactly one dietary regimen. So we could have three P and one A.

Or we can have one dietary regimen, two physical therapies and two antibiotics.

We’ll come back to these.

Next, you can combine the next two ordering rules and say that if F is in then O is in and W is out. And if W is in, then O is out and F is out.

The are two more rules. If you have N and U then G is out. Don’t read that backwards as saying G needs N and U. It’s a very easy mistake to make.

Lastly, if you have V then you need H and M.

(The contrapositives)

Let’s look at our two scenarios. If we put all three physical therapies in then we can apply the last rule. If V is in, H and M are in. H is an antibiotic and M is a dietary regimen. So there is only one way to set things up if all three Ps are in.

Things are more open ended when we have two physical therapies.

It’s worth trying out all the scenarios to see what happens. We could put in any of these three combinations:  UV, UW, WV

Here’s U and V in. V needs H and M. U, V, H and M fill four spots.

The only remaining spot is a single antibiotic. It might look like we could put either F or G there. But F requires O, which is a dietary regimen. That spot is already filled by M.  So we can’t put F in, we have to put G. Here’s what it looks like:

Next, U and W in. If we have W then we can’t have F. That means our two antibiotics must be G and H.

N can’t be the dietary regimen. If we have G, we need either U or N to be out. Here, U is already in, so N is out.

Instead we have to have either M or O. Here’s what that looks like:

Lastly, let’s try V and W in. If we have W then we don’t have F. We must instead have H and G.

If we have V we need H and M. So our dietary regimen is M. It looks like this:

These are the only four possible scenarios. You’ll notice something interesting:  we never have N and we never have F.

This is always true. You can’t make a workable scenario where F or N are in. So we can add these two deductions.