Q15

[cyruswhittaker]

These maximum number questions are a weakness of mine, especially in two-group grouping games with conditional rules. Is there a good way to go through this? Trial and error just seems so messy and unrestricted due to all the conditional possibilities. Thanks!

[bbirdwell]

A bit of trial and error is required, but it can still be a quick and efficient process. Generally the best strategy is to start with the theoretical maximum. Can everyone be on the finance committee? And then work your way down, being smart about the elements you choose for trial and error.

For example, if L is on the finance committee, two guys have to go to incentives. This doesn't seem to help me maximize, so I'm gonna put L in incentives. If Z in finance, however, H has to come with him, so this seems to help me maximize. I'd put Z in finance, L in incentives, and see what happened.

[mlbrandow]

I recommend always saving these questions for once you have done most other questions so that you have the most possible hypothetical diagrams to work from.

However, a quick tip for solving maximum questions with high efficiency is to take a look at the rules with a keen eye toward:

X --> ~Y

(As a side note, if you see any minimum questions, always look for ~X --> Y, as that will necessarily add one to the minimum. Hopefully you noticed that this was just a simple in/out game disguised as finance/incentives!)

Any rule that does this necessitates max minus one. And in fact, there are four rules that do that in this game. However, we do have a shortcut:

U/G and W/Z are mutually exclusive, so by rules 3 and 4 alone, the possible maximum is now only five. But a keener eye reveals that by rule 2, U actually excludes two variables (G, L) while G, by rules 1 and 5, excludes three variables (Z, H, U).

This means the possible maximum is now only four. You could do additional work, but instead, if you solve question 16 before returning to this question, you find that four members are possible, and so that's your answer! You may claim "hindsight" but this is not the case!

When you do games, try to see the entire page as one big puzzle. It's not just a game with several individual questions; each question can help solve other questions, and many of them are linked together. Unlike in LR, where each question is an entirely unrelated concept, understand that nearly all of the questions in a given game are interrelated. Use this to your advantage by always tackling the most restrictive questions first (If X, ...) once you complete the initial assignment question.

If you do this, question 16 eliminates 15's A and B, while the rules 2, 4 and 5 eliminate choices D and E.


This may seem a bit over-analytic, but the take-home message is this:

In some games, the key to annihilating min/max questions is simply looking at the conditional rules for instances of X --> ~Y, or ~X --> Y.

I hope this helps, and good luck!