Composition is a strange word for a logic paper

Every constraint puzzle has a hierarchy, and candidates almost always start at the wrong end.

The instinct is to begin with the first fact you were given. The right move is to begin with the fact that pins something down. In any set of constraints, one or two are absolute — the canteen is on the top floor — while the rest are relative — the library is above the studio. Absolute facts are anchors. Relative facts are floating until an anchor arrives.

So the method: scan all the constraints before writing anything, find the one that fixes a position outright, place it, and let everything else fall against it. That order collapses most puzzles in a fraction of the time, because each placement you make turns other relative facts into absolute ones.

Starting with a relative fact means holding possibilities open in your head — and working memory, again, is the thing that runs out. Not logic.

Here is the one that catches strong candidates, and it is worth a habit of its own.

When a puzzle tells you P does not face north, that clause is not colour. It is there because without it the puzzle has two answers. Question-setters do not add negatives for atmosphere; they add them because the arrangement is otherwise ambiguous and the negative is what resolves it.

So if you have used every positive fact and arrived at an answer without ever touching the negative one, you have almost certainly made an error — usually by assuming a direction or an order the puzzle never gave you. Go back and check what the negative was protecting against.

The practical rule: account for every clause. If a constraint went unused, either the puzzle was over-specified (rare, in a well-set paper) or you have not actually solved it (common). Under a clock this is a two-second audit that catches a whole class of confident wrong answers.

You have paper. Use it.

A constraint puzzle held in the head is an exercise in memory; the same puzzle on paper is an exercise in logic, which is the thing you are actually good at. Draw the five floors as a column. Draw the four sides of the courtyard as a square. Draw the row of seats as a row.

This sounds too obvious to state, and yet under time pressure candidates try to hold it mentally because writing feels like a delay. It is not a delay — it is the single biggest speed gain available in this area, because it moves the load off the part of you that is failing and onto the part that is not.

And it connects to the module's opening point. Decoding a composition — an arrangement in space — is easier when you can see the arrangement. The exam is asking you to be spatial about logic. Being literally spatial about it, on paper, is not a workaround. It is the intended method.