LSAT Logic Games – Sequencing Game Tutorial

Those aspiring for law school understand that studying logic games are crucial to landing a score that will get you into the law program of your choice.

Logic Games account for roughly 23% of your LSAT score, so knowing the ins and outs of this portion of the LSAT is imperative. What are we waiting for? Let’s jump into the details of logic games as well as some examples.

What are Logic Games?

The Logic Games are a section of the LSAT that requires analytical reasoning to solve problems that only provide a set of rules that may be used. Rather than memorizing information that must be used on this section, the logic games require the test taker to understand the structure of the information provided as well as make a logical conclusion about this information. This all sounds a bit more complicated that logic games really are once you understand the types of logic games to expect on the LSAT. Believe it or not, the logic games can actually be quite fun once you get the hang of them! In this post, we are going to walk through, step-by-step, on a sequencing logic game that you can find on the LSAC’s free June 2007 LSAT Practice Test:

Passage:

A company employee generates a series of five-digit product codes in accordance with the following rules:

-The codes use the digits 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4, and no others.

-Each digit occurs exactly once in any code.

-The second digit has a value exactly twice that of the first digit.

-The value of the third digit is less than the value of the fifth digit.

Explanation:

We know this is a sequencing game because the passage tells us that there are 5 digits and that there is some sort of sequence to these digits. We can draw this out as our game board:

Next, we know we have 5 game pieces: 0, 1, 2, 3, and 4 – we can draw these out to the left of our game board:

The next rules says that each digit occurs exactly once, meaning we couldn’t place 0s (or any other numbers) across the entire game board.

The third rule says that the second digit has a value exactly twice that of the first digit, so let’s draw this out:

Let’s think about this rule for a moment and determine how many possibilities there are for the first two places on our game board for one number to be twice the other. We know immediately that the first spot cannot be 0, because twice of 0 is 0, and we cannot use the same number twice in the sequence.

Next, we can try placing 1 in the first spot. Twice of 1 is 2. That would be a possibility. Same goes for 2 in the first spot, as twice of 2 is 4. We can now split our game board into 2 scenarios, where the first two spots are either 1 and 2 or 2 and 4 (and the remaining game pieces on the left of each potential game board:

The last rule says that the value of the third digit is less than the value of the fifth digit.

Let’s start with the first game board and write out all possibilities using the remaining game pieces, each starting with the sequence 1, 2:

We can go ahead and do the same thing for our second game board, filing in the remaining 3 open slots with possibilities, each starting with 2, 4:

Okay, so now we have made as many conclusions as possible using the set of rules given to us in the passage. We have 6 different possibilities of sequences that fit the rules. Now let’s try tackling a question:

Question 1:

If the last digit of an acceptable product code is 1, it must be true that the

(A) first digit is 2

(B) second digit is 0

(C) third digit is 3

(D) fourth digit is 4

(E) fourth digit is 0

We know that there is only one possible sequence where the last digit is 1:

Going through the answer choices, it becomes quite obvious there is only one correct answer based on our numbers:

The final answer to this question is A) first digit is 2

You can find the remaining question explanations for this passage at 7Sage’s logic games explanations.

As you can see, logic game questions do not need to be super complicated or intimidating. The best way to combat feeling overwhelmed by these questions is to draw out the rules, step by step, so that you can systematically go through each question following the passage.

Kristine Thorndyke is a teacher and loves sharing test-prep tips and tricks. She works for 7Sage, who helps prepare students for the LSAT as well as provides free Law Admissions Consulting!