Multi-Elimination Clues in Logic Grid Puzzles

Part 4 of 5 of How to Solve Logic Grid Puzzles.

A multi-elimination clue names two pairs and tells you they match up, without saying which goes with which. It looks like the hardest kind of clue, but it usually gives away more X's than any other.

Clue 5. Of the $6.00 animal and the orange balloon, one was the monkey and the other was the dog.

Read it as two pairs. The first pair is the $6 animal and the orange animal. The second pair is the monkey and the dog.

The first pair are two different animals

One of the first pair was the monkey and the other was the dog. So the $6 animal and the orange animal are not the same animal, and you can put an X where $6 meets orange.

The second pair works the same way. Here it tells you nothing new, because the monkey and the dog are both animals and could never have matched each other. When the second pair comes from two different categories, it gets an X as well.

Nothing else fits

The $6 animal was the monkey or the dog, so it wasn't the bear or the turtle. The orange animal was also the monkey or the dog, so it wasn't the bear or the turtle either. That is four squares to cross out.

In a bigger puzzle, with more items in each category, this step crosses out even more.

Find one half and you have the other

The clue still hasn't said which is which, but as soon as you learn one half you get the other for free. If the dog turns out to be the $6 animal, then the monkey was the orange one. If the monkey turns out to be the $6 animal, the dog was orange.

Nothing on the grid settles it yet, so leave the clue for now. It comes back in the last part.

Next: Finishing the grid
Previous: Greater than clues
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