Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Adam354]

I missed the 1 is double the value of 2 which is double the value of 3 reference, but the way I set it up allowed me to answer all the questions relatively easy still.

____1______2______3
R:__G____________Y/Z
S:__F______L______
T:_____K/M/O____

This allowed me to quickly see that L is worth Y/Z or G for example. Or that G and F were worth two out of K/M and O, which could end up as K and Y/Z, etc...

Relying on the diagram may have helped warm up for question 21, but the numbers value inference would have definitely helped on questions 19 and 23, and have been a net gain of time.

[Adam354]

I missed the 1 is double the value of 2 which is double the value of 3 reference, but the way I set it up allowed me to answer all the questions relatively easy still.

____1______2______3
R:__G____________Y/Z
S:__F______L______
T:_____K/M/O____

This allowed me to quickly see that L is worth Y/Z or G for example. Or that G and F were worth two out of K/M and O, which could end up as K and Y/Z, etc...

Relying on the diagram may have helped warm up for question 21, but the numbers value inference would have definitely helped on questions 19 and 23, and have been a net gain of time.

Correction: F worth G. L is not worth G.

[Beth Hayden]

Hi Adam,

Thinking of it in terms of value is primarily helpful to see the possible numerical distributions, but I still think it's useful to see them in a visual hierarchy so I also wrote out a similar diagram.

Best,
Beth

[mtdaniel]

I tried this game for practice and was able to get all the correct answers, but I had to make an assumption that was not stated in the setup, which took me a while to realize.

I think we have to assume that each building can have only one owner at all times. Each building has only one owner in the initial setup, but the setup never says that each building must always have one owner once they have started trading.

Without this assumption I had included three-party trade possibilities such as RealProp gives Garza to Southco and Trustcorp in exchange for Lynch Building from Southco and King Building from Trustcorp.

There were too many possibilities and I started thinking there's no way the writers intended the game to be this hard, and that's when I realized if I assume each building can only fall into one ownership group at a time, it greatly simplified things.

[Jeff Wren]

Hi mtdaniel,

Yes, I see how that could happen.

I suppose that one could argue that if it were a three party trade, the first company (in your example, Realprop giving Garza to Southco and Trustcorp for Lynch and King) would be trading 50% of the building to each of the other two parties, which is not one of the permitted trades, but this is not explicitly stated.

One thing that can be helpful if you're unsure of whether something is permitted in a game is to check the questions for a clue. Sometimes they will shed light on those details.

[LawSchoolDream]

Is there a way to set this up in simpler terms without cents and dollars? Like in a pattern fashion. Can someone from the staff please share a proper setup? Thanks

[Adam Tyson]

An alternative approach to this game without using supplied values would be to consider the possible outcomes of various trades. The focus should still be on the classes of buildings, rather than on the buildings themselves, because buildings within each class are entirely interchangeable with no special rules governing them. That is, nothing about L makes it any different than K; F is equal to G; etc. This is a common feature of many pattern games: the variables are indistinguishable, and the rules apply to each of them equally.

Once you recognize that the specific variables within each class don't matter, focus on the combinations that are possible. We start with these combinations:

One group has a 1 and two 3s
One group has a 1 and a 2
One group has three 2s

How can things shift around? If the person with the 3s trades them, they could only trade them for a 2. So we could end up with the exact same combinations as above, just trading which group has which combo, or we could alter the combinations to get this:

One group has a 1 and a 2
Another group has a 1 and a 2
One group has two 2s and two 3s

If you continue to look for other possible combinations, you'll find that there are none. R can trade with S, S can trade with T, T can trade with R, but no matter what they do, they will always end up with either the first combination (a 133, a 12, and a 222) or the second (two 12s and a 2233). Once you get to that point, you can make a couple good inferences, like the fact that the two class 3 buildings will never be split up, and the two class 1 buildings will never be together. And any company can end up with any one of those different combinations. R starts with a 133 but could easily make two trades and end up with a 222, for example. Or S could trade both of their buildings and get the other class 1 building and a different class 2 building, ending up with completely different buildings but the same combination of classes. Or S could trade their 1 for a pair of 2s, and a 2 for a pair of 3s, and end up with the 2233 combination. And so on!