Q13

[ShehryarB30]

Could you pls explain this question

[ohthatpatrick]

We wish the first question were Orientation, but, alas, here it is just an Unconditional question.

I always defer doing Unconditional questions until I've already done all the "If" (Conditional) questions, because we could use the scenarios we wrote for Q15, Q16, and Q17 to try to help us on Q13 and Q14.

For Q13, we could just look at what we wrote for Q16 and we would find that (E) was one of our scenarios. That would tell us that (E) is correct.

If instead we do the problems in order, we might just have to resort to plug and chug here. We know that one of the M's is in spot 5, so these answers will tell us where the other two M's are (everything else will be an S).

An answer will only be wrong it breaks the "max 3 cleanings" rule.

(A) M [] S [] M [] S [] M [] S S

Yikes, five cleanings! (This is where we first learn that we'll never be able to space out the 3 M's so that none of them are consecutive)

(B) S [] M M [] S [] M [] S S

Four cleanings, still no good. (This is where we might think to ourselves, "Jeez, even with TWO of them together, it's still too many cleanings. Is there any answer where there are all THREE of the M's together?" And then we'd jump to (E) and pick it.)

(C) S [] M [] S S [] M M [] S

Still four cleanings, no good.

(D) S S [] M [] S [] M M [] S

Another four cleanings, no good.

(E) S S S [] M M M [] S
Only two cleanings, this is correct.