Here’s the captions from the Video…

Introduction to LSAT Logic Games

What these first few lessons are designed to do is give you an overview of the LSAT Logic Games. We’re going to give you some strategies and start seeing some immediate improvement on your LSAT Logic Games Score. Now you are going to find much more detail and a lot more detailed strategies in subsequent lessons in our full LSAT Prep Course online, but this is enough to get you started and start seeing some immediate improvement now. So they way we are going to go about this is first we will take a look at LSAT Logic Games as a whole and how they fit into the LSAT and then we’ll look at some very specific strategies that you can use to apply to any LSAT Logic Game regardless of the category or type of LSAT Logic Game. And then we will take those and test them so you’ll get a chance to take some quizzes and see how you are doing with those particular skills and then finally we will go on and apply them to some actual LSAT logic games. So first of all let’s look at how the LSAT logic games fit into the test as a whole. So your LSAT is made up of four scored sections and the logic games are one of those for four scored sections, so that means they make up about twenty five percent of your LSAT score. Now for many students this is the hardest twenty five percent of the test but for many of you it will also be the easiest one that you can see some very quick improvement upon. So what is it that our LSAT logic games are testing? Well according to the makers of the LSAT they are testing your ability to understand complex structural relationships and that is supposed to mimic or simulate the complex relationships that you might see in a legal problem. So let’s take a look at one of our LSAT logic games and we can break it down into its parts.

Sample Logic Game

So looking at our actual LSAT logic game here (see video) you can see that at the top of the page you’ve got a set of instructions and this is going to tell you some information about how to answer these questions on the LSAT now we are going to look at this in more detail later and see what it means but for now let’s not worry about that, we’ll dive right in and take a look at the actual LSAT logic game. You can see that it is basically broken down into three areas. First you’ve got an introductory paragraph and this just gives you the basic structural format of this game. Then you’ve got a set of rules that tells you about the relationships of the entities and how things work in this game and combined with your introductory paragraph these rules are going to give you your diagram and help you set something up so you can go forward to answer the questions. And that is the last component of the game is the actual questions and they’re just asking questions about how these entities in this game relate to each other. Now you may be asking yourself what type of game that is? Or what category it fits into? Well it doesn’t ! Nowhere on the LSAT do they tell you what type of game this is and that’s a bit of a problem because a lot of LSAT courses and textbooks will focus on the specific categories and types of games and while that’s important to be aware of it’s not enough you need to have strategies that will approach all types of LSAT games no matter what type they are. And a place to start without knowing what type of game it is or what category it fits into. And that’s what we are going to give you here, we are going to give you a strategy that you can take in and approach a game no matter what type of LSAT game it is. Now later on we will look at those specific types and adjust our strategy accordingly and what that means is you can take this strategy move into any game and start working on it, putting some things on the paper developing your diagram and as you start to unlock what type of game it is or what category it fits into, then you can adjust your strategy and add some more elements in. So let’s go ahead look at our strategy that works with any LSAT Logic Game.

The Intro Paragraph – 3 Essentials

Whenever you look at the introductory paragraph for your LSAT logic game, which of course they all have, you want to get three things out of it. First you want to get out a list of entities, those are the characters or the actors, the people, the places or things that are going to be moving around in this game. You want to get a list of those entities. The second thing you want to get is the frequency at which those entities occur, so do you have to use them once? Do you have to use them twice? A minimum of twice? A maximum of five times each? Or can use them as many times each as you want. And then finally, the third thing you need to get out of every introductory paragraph for an LSAT logic game is placeholders and that is going to give you the basic structure of your game. It is just going to be a set of lines, blank lines that you are going to put your entities into. So again the three things are the Entities, the frequency at which they occur and the place holders in which to put them.

Entities

Your entities are the actors, or the character’s, or the people, the places, the things that are moving around in your logic game. So this could be a list of clowns that are going to be performing tricks and you’ve got names for them: Albert, Bob, Carrie, Doug and Egbert. And you’re going to represent them with the first letter of their name now sometimes you can use numbers if you just are simply given numbers to represent your entities as in you’ve got a code and you’re generating it from a series of numbers from zero to four. You are just going to put down the numbers zero to four. But if you’re given specific names for your entities you want to use the first letter from their name. So in the case with the clowns we might have are clowns named A B C D and E. If more your entities has two names, so we’ve got Donald Smith as one of your clowns. You only want to use one letter. It just gets confusing when you have two letters because suddenly you’re thinking Oh! is this DS going to be one entity or two entities and once you get into the speed of the game you can mistake it for two entities. So keep it simple, keep it consistent and just use one letter to represent your entities. So you’ve got your list of names for entities and then you are ready to go on and take a look at the frequency at which those entities occur.

Frequency

Now the frequency of occurrence for entities in an LSAT logic game is something that a lot of people miss when setting up their diagram because you don’t really need it but it is this extra piece of information they take you so much further and makes the game that much easier. So you really want to make sure the record this information. And that is: how many times can I use my entities? So in our previous example if I have clowns A B C D and E, how many times can I use them? Can I use each crown exactly once or a minimum of once or maybe I can use my clowns as many times as I want. You want to record that information. You can put it down right next to your entities so you know exactly how many times you can use them and then you’ll be ready to go on and develop your place holders to put those clowns or put those entities into.

Place Holders

The place holders in a game give you the overall structure of that game and they give you the places into which you are going to put those entities. So it is kind of like the board game that you are going to put your pieces on and the entities are the pieces. And you are going to lay out your place holders just as simple lines. Just a simple blank line, like you would in a game of Hang-man where you are going to put a letter or a number into it representing that entity. You are always going to use simple blank lines to represent your place holders. There are really three main ways you can setup your place holders you’re either going to have them in a simple order from left to right representing an order from first to last or Saturday to Thursday or from the left side to the right side of or first to sixth in a race. That’s your basic way of representing your place holders so that’s a basic order and you are going to put it from left to right with some simple lines to represent where you are going to put your entities. The second way you can represent your place holders is a little bit more of an advanced twist on that order. Let’s say you have a second element, let’s say you’ve got clowns performing their tracks but now we need to know exactly what type of trick each clown is performing. So they are performing tricks in order from first to fifth but they are also performing a certain type of trick. They are either dancing or juggling, well you need to make note of that underneath or above each clown. So right next to each clown, either underneath or above it, you want to have an extra line to represent what trick it is they are performing. You can do this anytime you’re given an additional level of information that corresponds directly to each of the entities that you’re putting in your order. This gives you a bit of an advanced quarter and is used in advanced ordering games where you’ve got two levels for your ordering. And this is your second way of laying out your place holders, now you can expand this if you need three levels. Let’s say we’ve got each clown from order from first to fifth and they are performing a certain type of trick that’s your second line and then they are wearing a different color of clothing, that can be your third line. So now we’re just adding a third element. Now typically in LSAT logic games you only get two lines here but you may get as many as three or more so you can be prepared for that by just adding an extra set of lines when or an extra set of place holders to record what’s going on in this order. Now the final way the that you can lay out your place holders for LSAT logic games is if we are putting them into groups. So we are separating our clowns into happy clowns clowns and sad clowns or we are separating them into clowns that can drive well, clowns that can drive poorly and clowns that don’t have their driver’s licence so in that case we are creating three groups. So you just want to do your lines now vertically for your first group, your second group, your third group or however many groups that you have. Now you’re just going to lay out your place holders as we did before but now instead of laying them out in order from left to right were laying them out vertically for our groups however many groups that there may be. Those are really the three main ways that you can lay out your place holders to develop the general structure of your LSAT logic game diagram. Now there are some subtle variations on these that we will get into later in the course but this is going to cover off the majority of your LSAT logic games.

Practice Questions

So now that you’ve seen the three main things that you want to get out of every introductory paragraph for your LSAT logic game, let’s go ahead and apply this knowledge to some practice questions. Go ahead and try the practice questions and remember for each LSAT introductory paragraph you want to pull out your entities, the frequency at which they occur, and put down some place holders to put them in. And don’t worry if you’re not totally comfortable with this yet, we are going to get a lot of practice doing this and once you’ve done the practice questions you can come back to the next video lesson and will show you exactly how we would have solved these problems.

More Lessons…

For the rest of the videos in this series including practice questions and solutions sign up for our trial LSAT course and check out the Analytical Reasoning Section.

Here we take a look at how since is used on the LSAT and how you can use it to better understand arguments in LSAT questions.

We often see “since” used in one of the following constructions. They are basically the same but reversed:

1. “Conclusion”, since “premise.”
2. Since, “premise”, “conclusion.”

So “since” is often part of a two part sentence. One part being your conclusion or sub-conclusion and the other part being a premise supporting that conclusion.

Let’s look at an actual LSAT question from the June 2007 LSAT exam:

Novel X and Novel Y are both semiautobiographical
novels and contain many very similar themes and
situations, which might lead one to suspect plagiarism
on the part of one of the authors. However, it is more
likely that the similarity of themes and situations in the
two novels is merely coincidental, since both authors are
from very similar backgrounds and have led similar
lives.
Which one of the following most accurately expresses
the conclusion drawn in the argument?

(full question and answers below)

You can see where since is used in the last sentence.

“However, it is more likely that the similarity of themes and situations in the two novels is merely coincidental, since both authors are from very similar backgrounds and have led similar lives.”

Here we have our conclusion as the first part of the sentence, followed by SINCE and then a premise which supports the conclusion directly.

Understanding this construction can help you break down the components of an argument faster.

BEWARE though, merely because we have found “a conclusion” does not necessarily mean it is “the main conclusion” of the argument.  In this case it is but in other questions this conclusion may go on to support a further conclusion. The key is to check whether this conclusion goes on to support some further part of the argument (making this a sub-conclusion) or if the rest of the argument supports this conclusion (making it the  main one).

More help with breaking down arguments in our LSAT Prep Course online.

The full questions and answers for the question above are here:

Novel X and Novel Y are both semiautobiographical
novels and contain many very similar themes and
situations, which might lead one to suspect plagiarism
on the part of one of the authors. However, it is more
likely that the similarity of themes and situations in the
two novels is merely coincidental, since both authors are
from very similar backgrounds and have led similar
lives.

Which one of the following most accurately expresses
the conclusion drawn in the argument?

(A) Novel X and Novel Y are both
semiautobiographical novels, and the two
novels contain many very similar themes and
situations.

(B) The fact that Novel X and Novel Y are both
semiautobiographical novels and contain many
very similar themes and situations might lead
one to suspect plagiarism on the part of one of
the authors.

(C) The author of Novel X and the author of
Novel Y are from very similar backgrounds
and have led very similar lives.

(D) It is less likely that one of the authors of
Novel X or Novel Y is guilty of plagiarism
than that the similarity of themes and
situations in the two novels is merely
coincidental.

(E) If the authors of Novel X and Novel Y are from
very similar backgrounds and have led similar
lives, suspicions that either of the authors
plagiarized are very likely to be unwarranted.

Correct answer: (D) This simply restates the conclusion expressed before “since” in our last sentence.

You can find IF THEN statements with necessary and sufficient conditions in both the Logic Games and Logical Reasoning sections of the LSAT.
Here’s another look at our IF THEN statements…
IF A then B
A is our sufficient condition – if we have A then we will always have B or in other words A is sufficient to know that we must have B
B is our necessary condition – B is necessary or required in order to have A. So if we do not have B then we will not have A. We see this in our contra-positive IF not B then not A.

Here is a basic logical reasoning style examples of these conditions:
The local theatre will only produce a new play if it has seen previous success in another theatre. My play has never been successful in another theatre, therefore my play will not be produced by the local theatre.
The necessary condition here is that a play “has seen previous success in another theatre”
In the absence of this condition we do not achieve our other condition – the sufficient one.
The sufficient condition is “the local theatre producing a play”

If I tell you that Bob’s play was produced by the local theatre, then you know for sure that Bob’s play has seen previous success in other theatres as that is a requirement for this local theatre to produce it. So being produced locally is sufficient to know that the play saw success in another theatre.
Another way to look at necessary and sufficient conditions is this:

I require air to live. (air is a necessary condition for my life)
If I am alive tomorrow then you know I have air. (being alive is sufficient for you to know that I have air)

Here’s another example of a logical reasoning style question that uses necessary and sufficient conditions/formal logic to get to the correct answer.
Whenever you encounter a logical reasoning question that uses the following words, it can be a good idea to diagram some of the statements in the argument out. You only need to do this if you are having trouble understanding the logic of the argument, often it is easy to understand and faster without a diagram. But if you’re struggling, a quick diagram can help a lot.
The words that make for easier diagrams are:
IF THEN
ONLY IF
UNLESS
IF BUT ONLY IF
IF AND ONLY IF
The example with Miley Cyrus and LSAT conditional statements above is a great example of when diagramming helps.

Also here’s some more articles on formal logic & conditional reasoning.

For complete coverage of this topic and tonnes of practice questions explained. Check out our LSAT Prep Course.

This video deals with a relatively simple logic game but the concepts taught here will help you on the more difficult games. We start by setting up the diagram and then look at some advanced techniques that will help make all your games easier.

Since Miley Cyrus would never date a boy who did not believe in marriage, and anyone who truly understands romance believes in marriage, only a boy who truly understands romance would have any chance of dating Miley Cyrus.

The reasoning in the argument is flawed because the argument ignores the possibility that some people who

(A) have no chance of dating Miley Cyrus do not truly understand romance
(B) truly understand romance have no chance of dating Miley Cyrus
(C) truly understand romance do not believe in marriage
(D) believe in marriage have no chance of dating Miley Cyrus
(E) believe in marriage do not truly understand romance

Read on for the explanation and answer…
This is a great example of a flaw LSAT question with formal logic or conditional reasoning. You’re looking to identify what’s wrong with the argument but first you’ll need to breakdown the conditional reasoning. Let’s start by drawing out our basic if-then statements:

We start with a couple of premises:

“Since Miley Cyrus would never date a boy who did not believe in marriage…”
and
“anyone who truly understands romance believes in marriage”

With any LSAT question involving conditional reasoning you want to turn the statements into basic IF-THEN statements. Our premises then become:

IF a boy does not believe in marriage THEN he cannot date Miley Cyrus
and
IF you understand romance THEN you believe in marriage

You can represent these graphically as follows:

Usually you would use just the letters B and D or BM and DM to represent belief in marriage and dating Miley Cyrus but we’ve used the full words here for ease of explanation. When you do this yourself on the actual or practice LSAT exams you should use only a single letter, it will speed things up.

These two IF-THEN statements are our premises and are known to be true for sure. We then have our conclusion which is suspect as it makes a conclusion that cannot be drawn on the basis of the two premises provided.

Our conclusion is a bit tricky as it’s an “ONLY IF” statement. The easy trick for these statements is to remember that you reverse the order of the statement when you turn it into a basic IF-THEN statement. e.g. ONLY IF A THEN B becomes
IF B THEN A or IF B –> A

Our conclusion was “only a boy who truly understands romance would have any chance of dating Miley Cyrus” or in IF-THEN terms:

ONLY IF understand romance THEN date Miley Cyrus
and reversing that to a basic IF-THEN statement we get:

IF Dating Miley Cyrus THEN understand romance

We can represent this graphically as:

So now we have our premises and conclusion expressed as IF-THEN statements. You can answer the question from here or you can go on to add some additional information by taking the contra-positives of each IF-THEN statement. For a detailed explanation of how to set up the contra-positive and IF-THEN statements check out this article, or try our LSAT Prep Course Online.

So here’s our complete story including contra-positives:

Premise 1:


Premise 2:

Conclusion:

So what’s wrong with our conclusion?  Our conclusion starts with the information on the left side of the IF THEN statement. Which is either “If you are dating Miley Cyrus” or from the contra-positive “If you don’t understand romance”

Let’s start with the first one: “If you are dating Miley Cyrus” – what do we know about someone who is dating Miley Cyrus? The way to find out is to skim read down the left side of all your equations in the premises. The premises are our facts so what we have there is known to be true. We skim the left side for something about a person “dating Miley” and we can then follow it to the right to find out more information. So we find the statement:

So we can conclude that if you’re dating Miley Cyrus, you believe in marriage. But our conclusion takes this further and concludes that you also understand romance. Can we go this far?  You can find out by continuing to follow the chain of logic in your premises, we’ve gone from dating Miley, to believing in marriage – what next? Nothing comes next! We have no statement that starts with belief in marriage on the left side and so we can draw no conclusions on this basis. So our conclusion went to far. It should have stopped with “Anyone who dates Miley Cyrus must believe in marriage.”  and not gone on to conclude they also understand marriage. So the error here is that the argument assumes that if you believe in marriage you also understand romance, or in other words and in the words of our question stem, it ignores the possibility that some people who believe in marriage do not truly understand romance.

With the information in our premises it’s possible that we have someone who dates Miley, believes in marriage but does not truly understand romance. This possibility was overlooked or ignored and so (E) is our correct answer.

Due to copyright protection this is not an actual LSAT Game. (however, all the questions in our paid course are actual LSAT questions) The design of this question is identical to the games you will encounter on the LSAT. The principles for diagramming this game apply to your basic ordering games on the LSAT. Begin with listing your entities:

A B C D E G N

Then make your placeholders for each entity:

___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___ ___

Then diagram each of the rules.
You’ll have to check out the video for the rest of the game.

A straw man argument is a fallacy based on misrepresentation of an opponent’s position. To “attack a straw man” is to create the illusion of having refuted a proposition by substituting a superficially similar proposition (the “straw man”), and refuting it, without ever having actually refuted the original position.

Or more simply: a straw man argument presents a weaker version of the opponents argument and attacks that weakened argument rather than the original argument. It often involves rephrasing the opposing argument in order to make it more vulnerable to attack.

E.g.
Person A: We should liberalize the laws on marijuana.
Person B: No, any society with unrestricted access to intoxicants loses its work ethic and goes only for immediate gratification.

The proposal was to relax laws on marijuana. Person B has exaggerated this to a position harder to defend, i.e., “unrestricted access to intoxicants”.

Straw Man arguments can be described on the LSAT as:

“portrays opponents views as more extreme than they actually are”
“rephrases the opposing viewpoint in order to make it more vulnerable to criticism”
“distorts the proposal made by the advocates”
“misstates the original position held by the politician in order to make it easier to refute”

These statements can be included either as a correct or incorrect answer. By understanding the straw man fallacy you will be faster at identifying these answer choices as correct or incorrect.

For free access to a complete “Flawed Reasoning Tutorial” email: freetutorial@alpha-score.com
The tutorial is online and interactive and includes 16 other common forms of flawed reasoning found on the LSAT.

For most LSAT logic game questions the best way to approach them involves redrawing your diagram. For the complete and accurate list questions, however, there is a better way.

The best way to approach this type of question is to apply each of the rules to all of the answer choices in turn. Cross off any answer choices that violate the rule. The only answer choice left remaining that does not violate a rule is your correct answer.

Here is an example:

Assume that these are your rules:
4 runners finish a race from 1st to 4th
The runners are Bob, Jim, Sarah and Angel

Rule 1: Bob finishes before Jim
Rule 2: Sarah finishes before Bob
Rule 3: Angel does not finish last

Which of the following could be a complete and accurate list of runners in the order they finish the race?

(A) Bob, Sarah, Angel, Jim
(B) Sarah, Bob, Jim, Angel
(C) Angel, Sarah, Bob, Jim

If we apply the first rule to each answer choice we see that no answer choices violate rule 1.
Next we apply rule 2. (A) violates rule 2 because B is before S.
Next we apply rule 3 (B) violates rule 3 because Angel is last.
The only remaining answer choice is (C), so (C) is our correct answer choice.

If after applying all of your rules you are still left with more than one answer choice you have either missed a rule or there is some other information in the game set up that needs to be applied as a rule. For example if in the question above we had another answer choice (D) Angel, Sarah, Bob, Jim, Ryan

This does not violate any of our rules but it does violate part of our game set up because it has 5 runners not 4 and it includes Ryan, a runner not included in our race.

If the novel were successful, it would be produced as a movie or adapted as a theatre script. However, this novel is not successful, therefore, we must conclude that it will neither become a movie nor will it be adapted as a theatre script.

The argument’s reasoning is flawed because the argument:

(A) fails to draw the conclusion that the novel will not both be produced as a movie and be adapted as a theatre script, rather than that it will do neither
(B) fails to explain in exactly what way the novel is unsuccessful
(C) equates the novel’s aesthetic worth with its commercial success
(D) presumes, without providing justification, that there are no further avenues for the novel other than production as a movie or adaptation as a theatre script
(E) fails to recognize that the novel’s not satisfying one sufficient condition does not preclude its satisfying a different sufficient condition for production as a movie or adaptation as a theatre script

This is a formal logic question. It uses conditional reasoning or if then statements.
For a full analysis of IF THEN statements and formal logic for logical reasoning questions see our free LSAT course: Formal Logic Tutorial
And here Practice Questions

Let’s analyze our stimulus.
Our first premise is: IF the novel is successful THEN movie or script
Our second premise: This novel is NOT successful.
Conclusion: NOT movie nor script

This is flawed formal logic. The mistake here is that we have reversed our IF THEN statement. As you can see from the tutorials in formal logic Formal Logic Tutorial you cannot reverse your IF THEN statement except as a contra positive. The contra positive of our IF THEN statement is as follows:

Original Statement: IF the novel is successful THEN movie or script
Contra-Positive: IF there is NOT a movie or script THEN the novel was NOT successful

There is nothing else you can conclude from this original statement or premise. This means that our conclusion is a flawed conclusion. The conclusion tries to state the following:

Conclusion: IF NOT successful THEN NOT movie or script.

We cannot draw this conclusion from our original premise. By drawing this conclusion we fail to recognize that the novel could become a movie or script by some other means than success. For example, maybe all novels about children are made into movies giving us the statement IF novel is about children THEN movie. This would give us another avenue to arrive at a movie or script despite the novel not being successful.

So our correct answer choice is (E). The argument fails to recognize that the novel’s not satisfying one sufficient condition (being successful) does not preclude its satisfying a different sufficient condition (some other means such as being about children) for production as a movie or adaptation as a theatre script.

Which one of the following, if true, best resolves the discrepancy above?

A) Ring tailed lemurs eat only the hard shell of the beetles.
B) Ring tailed lemurs often kill beetles by accident.
C) Ring tailed lemurs do not kill beetles frequently.
D) Beetles often compete with Ring tailed lemurs for food sources.
E) Beetles are easily caught by Ring tailed lemurs.

Explanation:

This is a paradox question and you are looking to resolve the paradox or discrepancy. The paradox here is that despite being unable to digest meat the ring tailed lemurs are eating beetles which would seem to be meat. We are looking for an explanation for this behavior.

A) If the lemurs do not eat the meat and only eat the shell that would explain our discrepancy. They are not consuming meat, only a hard shell that may be digested by the lemur. (A) is our correct answer choice.
B) This explains why they are killing the beetles but does not address the issue of why they are eating them and so does not resolve our paradox.
C) The fact that they do not kill them frequently still does not explain why they do kill them sometimes and more so why do they eat them. We have not addressed our paradox with this answer choice.
D) Once again, this statement may explain why the lemurs kill the beetles but does not explain our paradox as to why they eat them despite being unable to digest meat.
E) The beetles may be easy to catch but if the lemurs cannot digest they meat then why are the lemurs catching and eating the beetles? This does not explain our discrepancy either.

So our correct answer and the only one that addresses the discrepancy or paradox is answer choice A. Be careful of answer choices that explain some aspect of the argument but do not address the paradox directly. A good way to avoid these common wrong answer choices is the have a clear understanding of the paradox before moving on to our answer choices. In this question we paraphrased the paradox as “despite being unable to digest meat the ring tailed lemurs are eating beetles”. With this in mind the correct answer is much easier to spot.