LSAT 80, Game 1 Setup, Research Teams, LSATHacks

LG Game 1 Setup, by LSATHacks

Game Setup

Time on first attempt: 5:00

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This is a fairly straightforward two-group grouping game. If you found this difficult, don’t worry. By repeating this game until you’ve mastered it, you can gain a very solid skill-base for this type of game. They’re quite standard.

Each group has at least two students. One of the groups will have three, but we don’t know which one. However, you should draw the two slots as a reminder that two is the minimum:

I’ve also added the first, second and fourth rules:

• L is in green
• one of O/J is in each group. 
• O must be a facilitator, so I’ve marked that as well.

I’ve further marked the facilitator as the first spot. This is optional. Personally, this just makes it easier for me to track. 

Here’s how to read the diagram above: Letters hovering to the right of a group mean that those letters must be in that group, but we don’t know where. So:

1. L and one of O/J must be in group G
2. One of J/O must be in group R

The only thing left is the draw the remaining variables. Those are K and M. K is not a facilitator (rule 3), and M is random:

On my own page, I drew those off the right of the diagram. Sort of like this:

That’s it! This is a fairly simple game. Note that since L and O/J take up two spaces, group G is near full. So if you also put, for example, M in group G, then K would have to go in the other group. This mechanic comes up on a few questions.

Splitting The Game Board

There’s an alternate way to set this up: you could split the game into two scenarios: one with O as facilitator in the green group, and one with O as facilitator in the red group. I did this on my second go through. It was mildly useful, but led to no big deductions. On games like this, you can often decide to split based on whether you feel like doing it: it can help if that’s the way your mind is working based on the rules, or it can get in the way if you have a good grasp of the rules and don’t feel the need to split. On edge case games like this I sometimes split, sometimes don’t. 

But, one advantage of splitting in this case is that it becomes obvious that O and J are apart, and that group G always has at least two people (O/J + L). If you found yourself forgetting these rules, consider splitting when redoing this game.