Advanced and Uncommon Games Questions Forum

[theZeigs]

I have some strange questions, especially for those of you who regularly get -0/-1 with time left on your sections. I numbered them to make them easier to answer:

1. if you’re left with a bunch of time left, what to do?
OPTIONS:
a) Go back through all problems, check them all. I can see this being a legit strategy if you finish with like 15 minutes left.
b) Go to problems where the answer “jumped off the page” at you, i.e. you didn’t get it by process of elimination, and then eliminate the other answers.
c) Go prove that correct answers can definitely/must definitely be correct through hypos, etc.
d) if there were any problems you weren't "sure" about, redo those
e) chill out and take a breather
f) make sure you bubbled correctly
g) something else

2. What % of LG answers “jump off the page” and what percent require elimination of ACs? Does this change by game type and if so, how much? This is a very general/abstract question but sometimes I do games and I don't even see other answer choices, only the correct ones, but sometimes I think this is the case and I end up making (a) simple error(s).

3. If you're moving very fast through games, what % of your time is spent absorbing/understanding rules versus the percent time you spend on the questions themselves? I've heard that more time spent understanding and fully conceptualizing the rules generally makes the questions fly by.

4. Do you write contrapositives immediately after you write the initial rule or do you go back and do all contrapositives after writing/diagramming the initial rules? The latter is not what I’ve been doing, but recently I've done the latter and it seems to make sense because you can quickly start combining things, i.e. all the variables that are affected are already diagrammed and right in front of you.

5. This is super abstract, but at what level do you stop combining rules, contrapositives, etc. on games, esp. grouping games? It seems as though after about three "levels" of combination, no question will test that far out. A good example is PT 49 Game 3, where you can write the rules, make contrapositives, combine rules and contrapositives, but even then there are some extra combinations to make. None of these "third tier" combinations are tested from what I can tell (e.g. specifically for this game [summer program offering courses] you can say that if -Z and -P then -M) so it seems like a waste of time at the least, and confusing/misleading at the worst.

6. Maybe not an "advanced LG" question, but how much value do you get out of redoing games? Especially with non-grouping games, I vaguely will remember the setup/how the setup generally looks and some maybe advanced features (esp. if I missed them the first time around), but usually I really have to completely redo the game in order to get the answers. This is definitely helpful if I redo a game that took me e.g. 15 minutes the first time, or that I didn't understand, etc...

Games are going to be the decider between my target score and not, from what all my PT statistics are telling me. Really want to lock them down in the next (gasp!) 18 days. Thanks in advance to all who reply!

[CmonSD]

Don't second guess yourself. I found when I look over my work I get all freaked out and change answers that shouldn't be changed. (-0) on both tests I took. Now if only I could score remotely close to that on the other sections........good luck!

Edit* response is to question number 1. Didn't read the rest. Sorry.

[ZombiesAhead]

1. g - Pace better if you're not at -0 imo should not have a "bunch of" time left ever

2. ~17.93%

3. 24.62%

4. You shouldn't have to write out CP's necessarily

5. In something like 49 game 3 you should try to link all your rules together instead of writing out every permutation, CP, etc separately. This was a huge breakthrough for me because according to the LGB you would never know when you've found all the combinations.

6. Redoing games is good. Even if you've memorized the setup of every game from PT1-59 then at least you have a huge library of setups in your brain now.

Regarding your questions 4 and 5, it sounds like you are following methods as taught in the LGB which I definitely think are lacking for that type of grouping game.

[d34d9823]

1. In order: f, d, b, a, who cares

2. Like 1/2-2/3 of them. The harder games have less, I don't really see a difference by type.

3. The first 2 or 3 questions are always super easy. I generally feel like I have a good grasp of the rules after doing these.

4. I don't do this

5. I logically derive on the individual problems. For me, it's a waste to write stuff out that might not even come up. If you can't logically work through the rules in your head on each problem, this might be good.

6. Redo it if you screwed it up. Otherwise, meh. This goes for every section though, if you're not redoing your misses, PTs are a waste.

I rarely miss an LG question, just for reference. (think I've missed 3 on 8 PTs so far)

[bartleby]

3. I write the rules down a la LGB style and think about them when I'm writing it down. Not too hard. I agree with previous poster that the first few problems, especially the first problem if it involves "what's a possible combo", are easy and should be used to think about the rules.

For the what's possible question, I generally cross out all wrong answers so I can also get a general idea about what can't happen for the rest of the problems.