LSAT Matching Games are a common game type on the LSAT. They’re not as common as sequencing or grouping, but the skills used in matching often appear in the Analytical Reasoning section of the test. Often an entire game will use matching skills and sometimes matching skills will be used in hybrid games.
This is the first article in a series of articles about LSAT Matching Games. The series includes:
LSAT Matching Games
There are two basic forms of matching games on the LSAT: two-dimensional and multi-dimensional. The difference between the two is in the number of available attributes per entity.
For example, if you are trying to match three cars to three possible colors, but only one color per car, you’re dealing with the simpler two-dimensional variety of matching game. If, in addition to color, you also have to determine which cars are automatic and which are manual, you’ve gone beyond simple two-dimensional games and are into the more difficult multi-dimensional games.
Two-dimensional matching is easy and depending on your own preferences would probably be a game you would want to tackle early on in the section. Multi-dimensional matching can be significantly more difficult, so unless you’re a matching guru, you might save that game for last. We will cover multi-dimensional matching in another lesson and stick with two-dimensional matching now just to get familiar with the form.
LSAT Matching Game Setups
Let’s take a look at a basic matching setup so that you’re familiar with typical two-dimensional matching games. Consider what makes the following setup a two-dimensional matching game, and not a multi-dimensional or grouping game.
Three advertising agencies – A-Plus, Brenner Designs and Coverdale, Inc. – are making proposals for three different types of marketing campaigns to the same client. Each agency will present only one type of campaign during each presentation – Targeted, Universal and Vertical. Each company will be given an opportunity to present at 8 AM, 9 AM and 10 AM and may propose the same campaign more than once, but only one campaign per time slot. The following is known about the agencies and their campaigns:
Brenner does not present a Universal campaign in any of their presentations.
Coverdale presents a Vertical campaign in at least on of their three presentations, but not at 9 AM
A-Plus presents the same campaign at 9 AM and at 10 AM
Coverdale does not present a Universal campaign at 8 AM
No agency presents the same campaign in the same time slot
What makes this a simple matching game and not a grouping game? For starters, any one entity (advertising agency) could use any attribute more than once (e.g., A-Plus could present the Targeted campaign in all three sessions if they wanted to).
If you could only use an attribute once, it would be grouping (e.g., the lamp goes in the dining room – there’s only one lamp so it can’t go in the dining room AND the bedroom AND the living room). The rules tell you how to match these multi-purpose attributes to the entities. It’s as simple as matching nine presentations (three time slots per agency) to the type of campaign they want to present.
What would the LSAT typically ask you about this type of game?
Now that you’ve seen a typical LSAT matching game, let’s look at the setup in more detail in LSAT Matching Sketches.