Q24

[joyce.hau]

I got the inference of this game and managed to answer 3 out of the 5 questions, but Q24 really stumped me (I went back and figured out Q22). I think it's esp tricky because it's a "could be true" question, so I tried each answer choice and none seemed to work, or all did!

I worked backwards. If S [g, h] is fifth, then the fourth piece must be O [h, m]. (The other option, T [f,g] in fourth place would put N in third place, violating the last rule.) So I eliminated answer (B), Onyx is performed third.

Moving on, the third piece must be V [m,l]--so I eliminated (D) and (E). Then the 2nd piece is N [f,l] and the first is T [f,g]. The final set up is as follows:

T N V O S

But none of this helps with the answer choices. In fact, I've eliminated the right answer choice! Am I missing something here? I get that not every piece has to be linked to the one before or after it, but even then I had difficulty putting together a combination that would not violate the last rule about N/T in 2nd place.

Can someone help please? Thank you!!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Real close, but you took a wrong turn in the middle. There are three possible solutions if S is 5th.

N T V O S
T N V O S
V N T O S
_ _ _ _ _
1 2 3 4 5

If S is 5th either O or T should should go 4th. T cannot go 4th though because if T was 4th, N would be 2nd and there would not be any song that could go 3rd and share an instrument with either N or T. So O must go 4th.

Given that O is 4th and S is fifth, either N or T could go 2nd. There are two options when N goes 2nd and one option when T goes 2nd - these are listed above.

With these hypotheticals, you can see that answer choice (D) could be true.

One thing that you might have forgot is that 3 does not need to share an instrument with both 2 and 4, but it must share with either 2 or 4, or both.

Your process of plugging in was absolutely correct for a "could be true" question. You just have to make sure that you catch all the possibilities!

[zainrizvi]

Is there a quicker way to solve this? Quite often you can use the rules and inferences to see what must be false, but this question seems really open ended. Just wanted to make sure I'm approaching it correctly by plugging and chugging.

On that note, when is it best to "plug and chug" rather check against rules/possible deductions.