LG Game 4 Question 23 Explanation, by LSATHacks
I like using past scenarios to solve questions. We just made this working scenario for question 22:
If you imagine the variables floating down in the order MJLF, you can see that L can go third. There’s no rule against it! A is CORRECT.
You might be wondering how to solve this question without 22. Well, you can eliminate some answers. For example, the L – F – GK group is quite restrictive. L has three things after it, so L could go fourth at latest. That eliminates C, D and E.
But L actually can’t go fourth, either. We’d end up with this diagram:
M and H are too close together, which violates rule 1.
I think you can make a very important deduction during the setup of the game. We know that L has to be before FGK, so the earliest it can go may be 4th. But once you try that you can see that there’s not enough space left between H and M in the remaining spaces of the diagram. Hence, the only places for L to is 1st and 3rd, since it cannot go 2nd.
Thanks for pointing that out. It’s correct. You actually could split the game into two scenarios:
1. L is 1st: the game is mostly open
2. L is 3rd. I think this is the only possible order: MJLHFGK
So that’s definitely a viable way to do the game! However, I was able to solve it pretty well just with the existing setup. For me, glancing at it I’m fairly easily able to see L can’t go fourth, if I ever tried doing it. So whether or not you try to make that deduction depends upon: 1. How naturally it occurs to you, and 2. How likely you are to make a mistake if it doesn’t.
In my case, it didn’t occur to me very naturally, but lack of it didn’t cause me to make any mistakes and I solved 23 quickly. However, I could see these tradeoffs being different for different people!