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[10052014]

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[magickware]

Question 2: also, I have not timed myself doing these games. When should I start timing?

Always.

There's a big difference between timing yourself to see how long you took but not paying attention to the time during the game itself, and not timing yourself at all.

I made it a big point to time myself doing games early on and just trying to reduce the time when I redid a game 2-3 days later. Over and over.

[10052014]

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[magickware]

If you've never timed yourself on a game, then you should redo a good number of the ones from 1-40 timed to see what happens.

If you finish every game in under 8:45, up to 10-11 for the stupid long/brutal ones are acceptable because you can assume that you'll finish the easy ones in under 5-6, then you're great.

If not, then you need to work on timing.

[10052014]

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[Hemenway]

ok then. I'll just devote the next 2-3 weeks on drilling LG while timing then.

Other suggestions?

Fellow June 2014 test taker here.

This is what I did to prep for LG until now:

1. Read PowerScore LGB and Manhattan LG books
2. Re-read Manhattan LG chapter by chapter, this time drilling the corresponding games from Cambridge packets (PTs 1-38) (untimed). I also watched 7sage LG videos for any games that gave me trouble (to learn faster/more efficient set-ups for games, how to make crucial inferences, etc.)
3. Drilled all games from Cambridge LG packets, timed. At this point, I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of how much time I took on each game, as well as the number I got correct. If there were any games that gave me trouble (i.e. didn't do perfectly), I made sure to re-do them right away (this worked for me because at this stage, I had trouble remembering answers and key/game-breaking inferences). Even though I timed myself during this stage, I didn't really focus on solving games faster; I merely timed myself to get a sense of my general speed.
4. After finishing my first round of timed games, I went back and did all of the games again, timed.. this time I aimed to solve each game as fast as I could, while maintaining 100% accuracy.
5. After that, I re-did only Level 3 and Level 4 difficulty games from Cambridge LG, timed, aiming for faster time and 100% accuracy.

Using this method, I went from a -15 LG on my cold diag in June to -0/-1 (when I make careless mistakes)

In my opinion, the key to doing well on LG is solving the easy games as quickly as you can, so that you can have plenty of time for the hard ones + check your answers.

Repeat games you've solved before OVER and OVER and OVER again until you have them down cold. Ideally, you want to be solving even the hardest Cambridge LG games in under 9 minutes, and the easy ones in 2-4 min.

HTH

[Hat Trick]

ok then. I'll just devote the next 2-3 weeks on drilling LG while timing then.

Other suggestions?

Fellow June 2014 test taker here.

This is what I did to prep for LG until now:

1. Read PowerScore LGB and Manhattan LG books
2. Re-read Manhattan LG chapter by chapter, this time drilling the corresponding games from Cambridge packets (PTs 1-38) (untimed). I also watched 7sage LG videos for any games that gave me trouble (to learn faster/more efficient set-ups for games, how to make crucial inferences, etc.)
3. Drilled all games from Cambridge LG packets, timed. At this point, I made an Excel spreadsheet to keep track of how much time I took on each game, as well as the number I got correct. If there were any games that gave me trouble (i.e. didn't do perfectly), I made sure to re-do them right away (this worked for me because at this stage, I had trouble remembering answers and key/game-breaking inferences). Even though I timed myself during this stage, I didn't really focus on solving games faster; I merely timed myself to get a sense of my general speed.
4. After finishing my first round of timed games, I went back and did all of the games again, timed.. this time I aimed to solve each game as fast as I could, while maintaining 100% accuracy.
5. After that, I re-did only Level 3 and Level 4 difficulty games from Cambridge LG, timed, aiming for faster time and 100% accuracy.

Using this method, I went from a -15 LG on my cold diag in June to -0/-1 (when I make careless mistakes)

In my opinion, the key to doing well on LG is solving the easy games as quickly as you can, so that you can have plenty of time for the hard ones + check your answers.

Repeat games you've solved before OVER and OVER and OVER again until you have them down cold. Ideally, you want to be solving even the hardest Cambridge LG games in under 9 minutes, and the easy ones in 2-4 min.

HTH

When was the last time you finished a logic game in two minutes? I would aim to finish the easy ones in five or six minutes, and the more challenging ones in under 10 minutes.

That being said, I agree with most of what Hemenway said. The only way to improve dramatically on logic games is to drill them over and over again. I went from -10 LG on my diagnostic to a consistent -0.

[10052014]

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[10052014]

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[RobertGolddust]

Jay/ any member on TLS,

how is Blueprint LG compared to PS?

[Hemenway]

so you did the cambridge packets 4 times? How long did that take you, and how many LGs did you do in a day?

Well for steps 2-4, I did 8 games a day on top of LR drills (this was during the summer when I didn't have a job, so I could study full time: 10h/day, 6days/week).

For step 5, I did 4 games a day (by this point LG mostly clicked for me, so I only did a few every day to maintain my feel for the section).

Overall, I think all of the drilling took maybe ~2.5 months or so.

I followed this schedule because I originally thought I'd be taking the Oct 2013 test, but I ended up deciding to take June instead. If I knew I was going to take June in the first place, I probably would've adjusted my study plan accordingly and only have done maybe 5 games a day for steps 2-4 (spread over a longer time).

I don't know what your LG diag score was, but if you got more than 10 wrong (like I did), I don't think LG is something you can master in a few weeks (although you will definitely see improvement).

Since there's a lot of time until June, you might want to do fewer LG a day instead and also focus on some LR simultaneously (since you said you already drilled RC intensively).

Edit: I also strongly recommend watching 7sage videos even for games that you did perfectly on BUT gave you some trouble time-wise... I think there are some methods that 7sage does better than the LGB/MLSAT books (e.g. I really liked how the 7sage guy divides grouping/in-out game tables into sub-categories, I don't think LGB/MLSAT mentioned that).

[Hemenway]

When was the last time you finished a logic game in two minutes? I would aim to finish the easy ones in five or six minutes, and the more challenging ones in under 10 minutes.

That being said, I agree with most of what Hemenway said. The only way to improve dramatically on logic games is to drill them over and over again. I went from -10 LG on my diagnostic to a consistent -0.

I think around a month ago, I was doing most L1/some L2 games in 2.XX minutes, some in under 2 minutes.

Although I guess the word "easy" is kind of subjective... there are quite a few games that I thought were easy but are classified as L3/L4 in Cambridge... I routinely do them in under 4 minutes (e.g. PT34-G2, PT25-G3, PT18-G4).

[10052014]

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[10052014]

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