Q11

 
sahara
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Vinny Gambini
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Q11

by sahara Mon Nov 14, 2016 4:09 pm

I got Answer B for this one which is correct but it took entirely too long for me to get there. All of the other questions gave you some type of constraint that allowed the answer choices to be narrowed down. This questions essentially makes you solve 5 different scenarios. How did you look at this to be able to narrow down the answer choices and get to the correct answer in a reasonable amount of time? Thank you.
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ohthatpatrick
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Re: Q11

by ohthatpatrick Wed Nov 16, 2016 3:24 pm

It might just be an annoying time consuming question; there are some of those. :)

In your setup, did you realize you were dealing with these five floors (in some order)
M N
L alone
J O/Q
K
P

The other half of Q/O is going with K or P.

We'll have three floors with 2 people on them, and two floors with 1 person.

You could potentially do four frames to represent the four options for KP. When they interact with floor 2, they're automatically the other single.

For example if K/P are on 2/1
5:
4:
3:
2: K alone
1: P

We know that P has to double up with Q or O. But since Q can't be on the first or second floor, it would be PO.

5:
4:
3:
2: K alone
1: P O

Leaving MN, L alone, and JQ to inhabit the top three floors.

I'm not sure it would be worth framing all four positions, but it would probably have given us the tools to judge many choices on Q11 more quickly.

=====

Otherwise, since these are all giving us triggers and testing us on whether there MUST be a certain consequence, I would prioritize answers in which the trigger immediately tells my brain something. So if the trigger doesn't immediately tell my brain something, I would defer and try a different answer. My biggest priority in this (or any) game is the chunk.

A) J on 4 means nothing to me, except KP would be 2/1 or 3/2. Nothing about Q or the 5th floor there.

B) O on 2 means KP is 4/3 or 5/4. Since L is alone, L could not possibly be on the 4th floor, since either K or P will be there. Done!

In summary, a few takeaways you might have from this problem:
1. Some questions are just worse than others and WILL involve a lot of plug-n-chug. Make sure you develop the skills to come up with CBT's as quickly as possible.

For example, if I'm trying to disprove A, I just need to write a legal scenario where J is on 4 and Q is anywhere besides 5.

5: MN
4: JQ
3: L alone
2: K alone
1: PO

done.

That took about 8 seconds. If I do that five times, I'm still spending less than a minute. If it takes longer than 8 seconds to do that, then a critical area of skill development is getting faster at creating legal scenarios. A lot of people hem and haw when trying to just create a possibility -- you have to embrace the arbitrary nature of your task and just fill people in randomly at first until you start feeling constraints dictating the final moves.

2. Make sure that if a stack of answer choices is going to involve plug-n-chug that you initially do very little testing. Defer on any that don't give your brain some immediate idea/insight. A lot of times we put too much effort into the first few and then we see D or E and it's face smackingly obvious that the answer works. So make sure you give your brain a chance to see all five on a quick first pass.

3. When doing plug-n-chug, prioritize answers about people who trigger other stuff, or about people who are otherwise floaters.

4. When a game has a chunk, make that your default priority in figuring out how a new piece of information limits the game.