Logic Puzzles — Mains Strategy

Mains Strategy

Use the written exercises as short proofs and diagnostic explanations. They are educational reasoning tasks, not a claim that these puzzles constitute a descriptive CSAT paper. Start by naming the premises and the proposed conclusion. Distinguish what is explicitly given from any assumption introduced for testing.

Choose a representation suited to the claim. A truth table helps with conditional statements and exact truth counts; a list of permutations helps with small scheduling problems. Show enough of the calculation to establish completeness when claiming a unique answer. If a counterexample is sufficient, state why it satisfies the premises and why it makes the proposed conclusion false.

End by classifying the result accurately: necessary, possible, impossible or undetermined under the supplied information. When a familiar rule fails in a new puzzle, explain the missing condition instead of asserting that the puzzle is wrong. For a question with multiple surviving candidates, report the candidate set and the information needed to distinguish them. Clear reasoning should make the boundary of the conclusion as visible as the conclusion itself.