SparkNotes: New LSAT: Create a Blueprint: Tackling the Introduction

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2.1	Overview

2.2	Gameplan

2.3	X-ray of a Typical Logic Game

2.4	Game Types

2.5	Essential Strategy

2.6	Create a Blueprint: Tackling the Introduction

2.7	Get the Specs: Tackling the Rules

2.8	Search for Game Breakers

2.9	Cash In: Tackling the Questions

2.10	The Real Deal: Practice Set

2.11	Logic Games Summary

Create a Blueprint: Tackling the Introduction

We’ve already covered the initial stage of this step: determining the game type by analyzing the action set forth in the introduction. Your next task is to determine who or what that action is to be performed on. In other words, you need to identify the “characters.”

Meet the Characters

Let’s take our example from the first paragraph of this chapter: “Three rabbis, a priest, and an elephant walk into a bar . . .” It’s a good idea to write the characters down, in shorthand form, somewhere on your page. No need for formality; we’d simply label these characters as “R R R P E.”

You are NOT allowed to use scrap paper on any section of the LSAT except for the Writing Sample. On that section, you’ll be provided with scrap paper to plan out your written response. For Logic Games, you must do ALL of your work in the test booklet itself.

Not all characters are created equal. There are generally two types:

The Stars of the game are featured heavily in the game’s action or the rules. These are the characters you’ll return to again and again when looking for ways to begin and proceed through each question.
Free Agents are characters featured in few or even no rules at all. Free agents usually won’t be the focus of your attention unless specifically mentioned in a question stem. Stars, however, will often come into play whether a question mentions them or not.

In straightforward games, there’s nothing particularly fancy about the characters, and you can simply abbreviate them on your page much as we did above. But for more complicated games, the characters themselves are sometimes broken up into different groups, in which case you need to keep track of who’s who to start with, on top of everything else you’ll need to do with them.

Sketch It Out

The final result of Step 1 is a sketch on the page that accurately and efficiently represents the scenario and puts you in a position to manipulate the information to come.

Shorthand is abbreviated writing you use to help you manage the information provided. You can use shorthand to

Represent the game’s action
Note the game’s characters
Abbreviate the rules
Note any further deductions you derive from the rules

Now let’s see what a blueprint would look like for the situations described in the four game introductions discussed earlier:

Art Lectures: Ordering

Seven works of art—P, Q, R, S, T, V, and W—will be exhibited at a local gallery opening. A short lecture will be delivered by the creator of each work during the gallery opening. No two lectures will be delivered at the same time. The sequence of lectures must satisfy the following requirements:

This is clearly a standard Ordering game; for these games, it’s best to create an initial list of time slots, with the characters off to the side:

P Q R S T V W

It’s fairly easy to shorthand characters already presented in abbreviated form, but don’t forget to do so when the characters are represented by full names too.

Maggie’s Courses: Choosing

Maggie must select exactly three introductory courses for the upcoming semester. The available introductory courses are biology, communications, English, French, history, literature, and philosophy. Her selection must accord with the following conditions:

Here our characters are the seven courses. Don’t get distracted by Maggie! She’s just there to add some flavor to the game, which works the same whether she or a Martian or a hyena chooses the courses. Your blueprint would therefore begin with getting the characters down on the page and a reminder of how many letters you’re to select from this roster. Three dashes illustrate this fine and at a glance remind us that our job is to choose exactly three courses to fill in those dashes.

B C E F H L P


_____	_____	_____

Economic Seminars: Placing

The participants of two economic seminars, one on free trade and one on venture capital, are to be assigned from among six company employees—Jobson, King, Lee, Manute, Nora, and Orson. King and Nora are vice presidents; the rest of the employees are middle managers. Each employee must participate in at least one seminar. The following rules govern the assignment of employees to seminars:

Here, the characters themselves are broken up into two groups (vice presidents and middle managers), and your shorthand should reflect this. When you add in the two groups into which you’ll be placing the entities, free trade and venture capital, you’ll be all set to move on to the rules. Here’s what a simple but effective blueprint for this game might look like:

VP	MM
KN	JLMO

FT	VC

Birthday Party: Linking

Six children—Edel, Francie, Gillian, Holly, James, and Kayli—attend a birthday party. Three of the children are in nursery school, two are in first grade, and one is in second grade. Each child eats either pizza or a sandwich at the party. No child eats both kinds of food. The following must obtain:

Nothing fancy here, so just get the characters down on the page and some shorthand for the grade information as well:

E F G H J K

3 nurs

2 1st

1 2nd

With this blueprint in place, you’ll be ready to move to the rules to learn about how the kids will be matched to the food they eat.

You can also use a grid to keep track of the characters and their characteristics. List the characters across the top, and create rows for each characteristic you need to determine. Here’s how that might look in the Birthday Party game:

	E	F
G	H	J
K	Grade (NNN112)

		S/P

Notice that we have a box for each characteristic of each character. To remind us how many students are in each grade, we listed the breakdown in the left column.

Naturally, you’ll get more practice blueprinting the four full-length games we provide later in the chapter, and those in the practice test at the end of the book. For now, let’s move on to the next step of the Essential Strategy.

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