Q23

[NicholasO516]

I'm wondering how to best tackle a question like this. The "still on board phrasing really throws me off.

[ohthatpatrick]

The “still on board” is the awful part that permeates this whole game, so I don’t want to deep dive into it on the thread for Q23. We’ll just say …

“still on board” = didn’t come before

“G is still on board when we reach Fundy” = G was not earlier than F.

Even once we translate that rule, it’s still annoying to deal with, because “anti-ordering” rules have two equally mediocre options:

OPTION 1:
G -/- F

This option is okay, but generally our brains do better when we write what we MUST do rather than what we CAN’T do.

OPTION 2:
G or F - G
F

This option Is okay since it shows us that G and F will be together or G will be later. It’s just annoying because it’s two things to look at instead of one.

But you pick one and roll with it.

For Q23, we have to translate "G is NOT on board when we reach S".

“not on board” = already got off before that stop
“G is not on board when we reach Simcoe” = G before S

The smartest way to do Q23 is to read it and see that it’s dealing with the last rule.
Reading that rule, we understand that if “G isn’t on board when we reach Sim” then J wasn’t on board we reached Fundy.

So from Q23, we have
g – S
And
j – F

From the master rules, we know v – j.

We can then say
g – S
and
v – j – F

F could only be in 3 or 4, so we could potentially frame those scenarios, but if we happened to look through the answers with just g – S and v – j – F in mind, we could see why (D) is impossible:

V will get out at least two spots before Fundy, so it couldn’t possibly still be on board when we reach Fundy.