Improving Logic Games under Timed Conditions Forum

[Rikkugrrl]

I've taken several full practice tests and countless timed sections, and I've noticed something about my Games score. I get a -7 or -8 every time, but that's because I didn't get to 5 or 6 of them. Of the ones I answered I miss one, maybe two on a bad day. More often than not I don't miss any. I've tried to finish each section by a certain amount of time, but that just makes my accuracy worse. I don't think I'm panicking or getting nervous and I don't have time issues with any other section. Do ya'll have any advice?

Thanks!

[astro1819]

I've taken several full practice tests and countless timed sections, and I've noticed something about my Games score. I get a -7 or -8 every time, but that's because I didn't get to 5 or 6 of them. Of the ones I answered I miss one, maybe two on a bad day. More often than not I don't miss any. I've tried to finish each section by a certain amount of time, but that just makes my accuracy worse. I don't think I'm panicking or getting nervous and I don't have time issues with any other section. Do ya'll have any advice?

Thanks!

Practice, practice, practice. Do every game available, multiple times. If I had a game that I was having trouble with (and even ones I felt comfortable with), I would come back to it (after a few days to "forget" it) and redo it until I could finish it flawlessly. Soon enough, you'll be prepared for almost every game in their arsenal.

[dakatz]

Learn to do the easy questions quickly. By doing this, you will probably do better on the harder ones as well simply by virtue of the extra time you will have saved up on the easy ones. Many of the hardest questions aren't actually "hard", but they require extra work and hypotheticals to figure out. If you become more proficient at knocking off the easy questions, your score will improve even more dramatically than if you focus solely on the hard ones.

[scribelaw]

Learn to do the easy questions quickly. By doing this, you will probably do better on the harder ones as well simply by virtue of the extra time you will have saved up on the easy ones. Many of the hardest questions aren't actually "hard", but they require extra work and hypotheticals to figure out. If you become more proficient at knocking off the easy questions, your score will improve even more dramatically than if you focus solely on the hard ones.

This. Do the questions where they give you something concrete, where they place one of the variables in a spot and give you something to work with. Save the really open-ended questions for last, when you can use your prior work to rule out possibilities.

Also, are you recycling your old answers?

In almost every game, you can use the work you've done on previous questions -- and on the gimme question No. 1 in most games -- to rule out several possibilities in subsequent questions. This saves time.

[Rikkugrrl]

Thanks ya'll. I get the feeling there's something I'm fundamentally doing wrong, even with the easy ones. My tutor can figure out problems in lightning speed by testing each answer choice. When I do that, I usually get the right answer, but it's not nearly fast enough. With "must be true" questions I can usually figure it out through the set up, but "could be true" questions usually leave me testing each answer choice.

The biggest problem with could be trues is even if I luck out and test the right answer first or second, my OCDness gets in the way and I want to check all the other choices just in case. It's saved me on a few problems, but overall is that a bad idea?

[thwalls]

My trick is pretty easy. Buy all of the exam books and save a few the games sections for this kind of practice: Copy the games section and then whenever you get a chance try to do just one game at a time in 8' 45". Try to think of each game as standing by itself. Also, remember that if you get stuck on one, move on immediately, don't just sit there staring at the page.

The best piece of advice that got me to jump from a -14 to a -1/-2 was when somebody on this board told me I was thinking too much. These questions are actually very easy, but because of the way they are worded they make you think that they're very difficult. The more you repeat the games, the more the patterns will start to emerge and the more you'll be able to recognize the games for what they are as soon as you see them. There are only so many ways they can ask the same question, y'know?

[goosey]

Thanks ya'll. I get the feeling there's something I'm fundamentally doing wrong, even with the easy ones. My tutor can figure out problems in lightning speed by testing each answer choice. When I do that, I usually get the right answer, but it's not nearly fast enough. With "must be true" questions I can usually figure it out through the set up, but "could be true" questions usually leave me testing each answer choice.

The biggest problem with could be trues is even if I luck out and test the right answer first or second, my OCDness gets in the way and I want to check all the other choices just in case. It's saved me on a few problems, but overall is that a bad idea?

+1 on the ocdness. I do the same. But if you do enough games, you even manage to humor your ocdness within the time limit. as others said, you have to just practice. also do the games over and over--try and understand why you got things wrong and also why you got things right-->it will help you spot correct answer choices much easier next time around, saving more time for being ocd.


Also, certain questions are there simply to eat up a lot of time. make sure youre quick enough with the others that this doesnt throw u off.

lastly, I took the lsat twice, and i got -9 and -8 on games, which lowered my score that many points. if I could get a handle on the games, I could have a 170. so I decided to work on them a LOT for february and here are a few things that worked for me:

1. Kaplan Logic Games Workbook (awesome practice)
2. After I finish a game, I go over the correct/incorrect choices and do it again
3. I time myself with 8 minutes a games instead of 8:45 a game. time invariably goes much faster on test day--be prepared for that
4. I try to do atleast 2 timed sections a day (at 32 minutes a section)

I've gotten to -0 to -2 on my sections now. and it really hasnt taken that long. I am convinced that people can master the games fairly quickly if the commit themselves