Combinations of Capacitors

I'm not sure I can follow your second diagram correctly without making a few assumptions (which may be wrong). Perhaps you can give each cap in the original circuit a label and label your attempt according to the original circuit.

 

What 3 parallel capacitors?

The upper part of the original circuit has more that two caps in parallel.

 

To simplify the case of whether components are in series or parallel (dont worry, whats applies here works for caps also). Think of them as being resistors. Consider this diagram (ignore the formulas):
http://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/en/4/47/Cdr.GIF [Broken]
You see a current, I_T, entering the two resistor branch. Now are these two resistors in parallel or series? Why?
Knowing this, you will be able to answer the question you circled.

 

Well taking the original diagram (upper left), the two caps are not in parallel. Lets say we trace a current coming from the node a. The current splits into three parts. One going left, down, and right. The current that flows left flows through two caps, so these two now have the same current flowing through them. The one that flows down flows into one cap, the one that flow right flows into two caps, so these two now have the same current flowing through them. All three currents then rejoin at the base of these 5 caps and flow into the second set....

So we have I_left[tex]\not=[/tex]I_down[tex]\not=[/tex]I_right, therefore these three bracnches must be in.....? How about two caps each in the upper left and right branch? So we have to consider two things, whether the branches are in series/parallel and whether the caps on the individual branches are series/parallel. Just tracing a current should be enough to figure this out.