Setup and Rule Diagrams

[Dave Killoran]

Setup and Rule Diagram Explanation

This is a Basic Linear: Balanced game.

This is a standard Balanced Linear game featuring a lot of sequencing. Overall, this is an excellent beginning to the games section. The basic structure of the game is:

The first rule is sequential, and can be diagrammed as Q > W. Two Not Laws are created:

The second rule is also sequential, and can be diagrammed as U > P. Two more Not Laws are created:

The third rule creates a dual-option for appointment 3:

The fourth rule creates an unfixed block, which can be diagrammed as:

Although no direct inferences follow from this rule, a series of fairly obvious linkage inferences can be drawn from this rule. For example, is S is 7th, then R is 6th, and T must be 3rd, etc. There are so many of these inferences that it is not worth writing down; instead, note the connection and move on.

The final setup to the game is:

[thecmancan]

Did anyone split based on R or T in 3?

Also, this had a LOT of local questions. Did anyone find a short cut to do this faster?

[Zach Foreman]

I did three templates in my set up:

_SR____
__RS___
__T____
1234567
W            P
Q            U

This game is definitely about making mini-setups. But, you can get through them pretty quickly if you keep track of which rules have which variables. For example, in Q3,
with the local information we have TURS>P
Adding our templates we get two: QWTURSP and TURS(Q>W,P)
We can see that the 5 answer choices are mostly the same with A,B and E being "sometime before" and C and D are "immediately before". Since it is a must be true, we should focus on the "sometime before" since that is more likely to be true. We also focus on avoiding Q and W because those can be at the very beginning or at the very end. That leaves only answer choice B to look at and a quick look at our two templates confirms it.
BTW, don't spend much time on the setup as there are no deep inferences/connections between the rules. It should only take you 2 minutes or less to diagram this. Then you have 7 minutes or so to attack the questions. Some games have lots of inferences and diagramming to do so might take 4 minutes to set up. In those cases, you might only have 3-4 minutes to attack the questions, but there should be some global questions and others that will quick to answer.