I don't understand how logic games are supposed to be done Forum

[fosterp]

I've been following the stickied guide here the last few days, trying to go through the basic linear logic games from practice tests. I went through the linear section of the logic games bible and the concepts seemed to make pretty good sense and I did well at being able to draw out the rules on a diagram and make basic inferences.

Now I am trying to apply these strategies to actual questions and I am getting so frustrated because I can't figure out how I am supposed to go about doing the questions. Honestly I can only get the first two within a decent amount of time, and the rest of the questions just piss me off. Either there is something really big I am not getting about these games or I am really stupid. Basically it seems as if every problem my only way to solve is drawing a ton of hypotheticals to see which answer choice will work. Of course this means the game ends up taking 20+ minutes to complete.

For example, one game I worked on just recently was game #3 on test 34. I got the first question easy enough, then I look at question two. Wtf? I draw a mini diagram to draw the new rule and now how the hell am I supposed to assess the number of different ways the trains could arrive? I know that R can only be placed in # 2 or 3 but then I can't account for any of the other variables and their possibilities. Each question after seemed to be just as puzzling. When I was doing the LGB it seemed like I could breeze through each question easily and identify the answers quickly or at least narrow them to one or two, and maybe have some trouble with the last two.

Is there something else I should be reading to help me learn how to do this game in a reasonable amount of time? I read and reviewed the relevant section in LGB. Do the later chapters in LGB have some secret that will help me with linear games?

[mottainai]

Honestly, it just takes practice and repetition. Master doing games untimed first. Later, you'll start to make inferences quicker and the proper strategy for attacking games will become easier to discern.

[vatech11]

Hey man it took me a bit too, but after about a month I could get at least 3 games completed and sometimes 4 in the time, but generally 3. All of a sudden I started seeing things quicker.

[MURPH]

Is there something else I should be reading to help me learn how to do this game in a reasonable amount of time? I read and reviewed the relevant section in LGB. Do the later chapters in LGB have some secret that will help me with linear games?

Slow down. I know that seems like the wrong answer but you need to really spend a lot of time on this.
Stick to one game for a while. Play with it and imagine every possiblity. Even after you figure out the right answer go back and look at all the wrong answers and figure out why each is wrong. Prove without a doubt that they are wrong.
Put the rules together to build new rules. Play with them. Imagine how, if the rule was worded differently, the game would change.
After doing one game for a long time like this, use the index at the back of the Bible to find a similar game. Start playing with that one too. You want to get to the point where you are thinking about these games in your head - actually, you're probably doing that now. But you want to play with them in your mind like toys, not want to go all Mel Gibson on them.

You have a few months until the October test. Take your time. You can work on timing in late August. For now play.

[theanswer]

You might want to try doing 3 or so sets of games un-timed, making sure to finish each problem and understand the inferences that lead to each right answer, and then going back and re-doing the same sets timed. Basically, your goal should be to train yourself , and I think going back over previous game sets will help that

I very honestly believe that logic games are learnable, and with enough effort anyone can score at or near perfect on the LG section. Plenty of others around here will tell you the same.

[gdane]

Dont worry about it. Most people really struggle with logic games at first. They get easy and fun afterwards.

In regards to you diagramming all the trains and rules, you didnt need to do that. Remember to eliminate answers, something that can usually always be done by looking at the rules and/or the previous questions answer. When you do this youre left with 2 or 3 answer choices and its much easier to diagram that than it is to diagram 5 answer choices.

You'll get the hang of it.

Good luck!

[tomwatts]

For many (though not all) questions, the new information in the question stem triggers something else in the rules. This is most obvious in, say, In/Out games (e.g. Birds in the Forest), in which they tell you that, say, G is in, and one of the rules is that if G is in, then H is out, and so on, but it happens in most games in most questions to some degree or another.

There are some games that are pretty heavy on hypotheticals, though, and you may have just happened on one by chance.

[James2010]

My suggestions - buy the powerscore LG bible - its the best intro I've found.

That said - do a lot of them and they will get easier but it takes time and for some people logic games are just difficult (to me they are the one actually difficult part of the test).

Good luck!

[lastch2]

can't say much more than everyone else did, but it helped for me if 1) i look through every rule for each question to see if there's something i may miss..a lot of times it's something little like that that makes the biggest difference, and 2) like they said, make sure you know why the correct answer choice is correct. it's early still so try different techniques. it takes a while to figure out how you work on logic games, but once you do you'll find it's easy to get -0 on them!

[kazu]

Is there something else I should be reading to help me learn how to do this game in a reasonable amount of time? I read and reviewed the relevant section in LGB. Do the later chapters in LGB have some secret that will help me with linear games?

Slow down. I know that seems like the wrong answer but you need to really spend a lot of time on this.
Stick to one game for a while. Play with it and imagine every possiblity. Even after you figure out the right answer go back and look at all the wrong answers and figure out why each is wrong. Prove without a doubt that they are wrong.
Put the rules together to build new rules. Play with them. Imagine how, if the rule was worded differently, the game would change.
After doing one game for a long time like this, use the index at the back of the Bible to find a similar game. Start playing with that one too. You want to get to the point where you are thinking about these games in your head - actually, you're probably doing that now. But you want to play with them in your mind like toys, not want to go all Mel Gibson on them.

You have a few months until the October test. Take your time. You can work on timing in late August. For now play.

+1. Solid advice. At this point, you shouldn't be worried about speed. Resorting to listing hypotheticals will not help you improve. Take one game and try to make as many inferences as you can. Usually the questions have some sort of "goal" - they want to see if you found out how those two rules interact, or if you got a certain inference. Once you get the accuracy part down, and have figured out how the games work, improving your speed will be easy.
Good luck!

[pkpop]

You said you had the LGB? Go through chapter 2 again if you're not getting things - DO ALL THE DRILLS! Be sure that you can do all the simple inference things the drills ask you to do. Another thing that helped me out when I first started was contrapositives. I know there is a pretty good worksheet on TLS Law school admissions section you can work with too. Games really opened up for me once I was able to grasp contrapositives and be able to quickly diagram them. Other than that, just make sure you read the rules correctly, and work on each type of game until you get the hang of it. Start with Basic linear and go from there. Learn numerical distributions (which I think is introduced later in the bible), and that will limit your options even more.

Like everyone else said - repetition. Do the same game and figure out why you're getting the questions wrong. Mark what types of questions slow you down. You said you were okay with making diagrams, you just gotta learn what effective diagram to draw for each game and that will come to you with practice.

[vatech11]

For me it was repetition, but I focused more on getting it right and going slow at first before I worried about increasing speed. Hope that helps man, but that was my approach.

[rivermaker]

still in the process of actually getting good at logic games, but yeah. Seems like for every type of game I had to break some kind of barrier to start seeing inferences and rules for that type.

[arewhyaen]

Im getting better at LG since I started--when I was just a complete mess. The thing that is helping me most involve keeping my master diagram and rules as CLEAN as possible. Keep it organized and labeled. When I find that I'm struggling with a question, its usually because Im missing a rule that I wrote in some random place or something along those lines.

And just doing some brief simulations in your head before you look at the questions sometimes helps (i.e. can this go here? Since this is like a 3 letter block, what can go around it and where cant it go?). I do these pretty quickly now, but, just as everyone said, it takes time and practice.

[northwood]

I find that doing each game at least 3 times helps dramatically wiht my games prep. The first time, I look to make all deductions, and double check the rules and set up for the game. The second time, I look at the questions for the game and try to gauge how easy or difficult the game will be ( how many specific, general, and complex questions). Then attack the game accordingly. Look to see why the incorrect answers are incorrect, and how it relates to both the rules and deductions in the game. If there is a grab a rule question, I like to plug the answer choice under my master diagram the second time, and try to figure out how and why its the right answer ( i match each element placement to the rules and deuctions). 3rd time, i answer the questions, aiming to complete each game in 9 minutes with no incorrect answers ( do each game on a different day)

It can be very time consuming, but I found that this helps me understand the thinking behind the game, and it makes making deductions, and de coding each rule easier and quicker to do accurately.

[MURPH]

Good luck OP if you need any more guidance you can PM me. The advice here: slow down, redo the old games, imagine hypotheticals, understand why wrong answers are wrong (as opposed to only figuring out why right answers are right) are all good advice. Follow it trhough and you will do well in Oct.

[TonyStarks]

I'm having the same problems as you fosterp where I freeze up when trying to make/use inferences on my own w/o the LGB's help. It seems so easy though when I check my answers afterwards and go through it slowly. I guess we just have to put in enough work to where it comes naturally.