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Hello All,

I'm getting quite comfortable with most game types now, but i'm finding that my weak spot tends to be on hypo questions. I'm just too slow with them, and end up wasting time with trial and error. I know the obvious answer is to do more games, but was curious to see if anyone has any specific experience with overcoming this problem.

Thanks!

By "hypos", I'm assuming you're referring to CBT (hypotheticals). Not really sure what you are asking, if you give a PT with a Game # and Q that gave you trouble, I can give you my though process that I use.

railyard wrote:By "hypos", I'm assuming you're referring to CBT (hypotheticals). Not really sure what you are asking, if you give a PT with a Game # and Q that gave you trouble, I can give you my though process that I use.

Yes, sorry for being vague, that is what I meant. More specifically, my concern is that although my setups are usually close to perfect, when it comes to conditional questions ("If G and S are in group two, then...) I usually find myself having to resort to trial and error. Perhaps there's no way to avoid this entirely, but it seems to me there has to be some way to strengthen my ability to think two or three "moves" ahead without having to write it out. Do you have any drills or practices that you've found useful to strengthen this skill?

CTrus wrote:

railyard wrote:By "hypos", I'm assuming you're referring to CBT (hypotheticals). Not really sure what you are asking, if you give a PT with a Game # and Q that gave you trouble, I can give you my though process that I use.

Yes, sorry for being vague, that is what I meant. More specifically, my concern is that although my setups are usually close to perfect, when it comes to conditional questions ("If G and S are in group two, then...) I usually find myself having to resort to trial and error. Perhaps there's no way to avoid this entirely, but it seems to me there has to be some way to strengthen my ability to think two or three "moves" ahead without having to write it out. Do you have any drills or practices that you've found useful to strengthen this skill?

So, what I used to do was to basically add it to the setup and see what deductions resulted. The answer is almost always one of these deductions.

Don't try to do stuff in your head. I went from struggling with LR to going perfect once I just started writing my stuff out for each question.

Dcc617 wrote:

CTrus wrote:

railyard wrote:By "hypos", I'm assuming you're referring to CBT (hypotheticals). Not really sure what you are asking, if you give a PT with a Game # and Q that gave you trouble, I can give you my though process that I use.

Yes, sorry for being vague, that is what I meant. More specifically, my concern is that although my setups are usually close to perfect, when it comes to conditional questions ("If G and S are in group two, then...) I usually find myself having to resort to trial and error. Perhaps there's no way to avoid this entirely, but it seems to me there has to be some way to strengthen my ability to think two or three "moves" ahead without having to write it out. Do you have any drills or practices that you've found useful to strengthen this skill?

So, what I used to do was to basically add it to the setup and see what deductions resulted. The answer is almost always one of these deductions.

Don't try to do stuff in your head. I went from struggling with LR to going perfect once I just started writing my stuff out for each question.

This is good advice, thank you. I think part of where my time wasting has come from is in my decision making about whether or not to get the new inferences on paper. I'm going to try just having a mini setup on the side to add them on for a few PT's.

So there is a ton of room for work in the LG section on the actual test. I used to just copy my setup fresh for every question and then plug in whatever new info or changes the individual question asked.

CTrus wrote:This is good advice, thank you. I think part of where my time wasting has come from is in my decision making about whether or not to get the new inferences on paper. I'm going to try just having a mini setup on the side to add them on for a few PT's.

Definitely write everything down (if you are not writing down your initial inferences, then you should be doing that as well). HOWEVER, make sure that you have an organizational method for your charts. Don't mix in the hypo rule chart with the normal rule chart. Make sure that you can recognize which is which or it will mess you up when you move on from that one question.

CTrus wrote:

Dcc617 wrote:

CTrus wrote:

railyard wrote:By "hypos", I'm assuming you're referring to CBT (hypotheticals). Not really sure what you are asking, if you give a PT with a Game # and Q that gave you trouble, I can give you my though process that I use.

Yes, sorry for being vague, that is what I meant. More specifically, my concern is that although my setups are usually close to perfect, when it comes to conditional questions ("If G and S are in group two, then...) I usually find myself having to resort to trial and error. Perhaps there's no way to avoid this entirely, but it seems to me there has to be some way to strengthen my ability to think two or three "moves" ahead without having to write it out. Do you have any drills or practices that you've found useful to strengthen this skill?

So, what I used to do was to basically add it to the setup and see what deductions resulted. The answer is almost always one of these deductions.

Don't try to do stuff in your head. I went from struggling with LR to going perfect once I just started writing my stuff out for each question.

This is good advice, thank you. I think part of where my time wasting has come from is in my decision making about whether or not to get the new inferences on paper. I'm going to try just having a mini setup on the side to add them on for a few PT's.

Yep, with questions that give you clear conditional statements, you're much better off immediately plugging them in. Don't waste any time debating it - do it automatically. I rarely even consider what the answer could be until I've filled in my sub-diagram and made all potential deductions. As long as you're organized enough to keep your sub-diagrams separate from your main diagram (which you should never tamper with, beyond making the original deductions), this will serve you well.

Having extra potential setups can also help you in absolute questions, like MBT and MBF. If you've made a valid setup where a variable is in a certain place, you know of that possibility, and can eliminate related answers immediately.

The real dilemma that a lot of students struggle with is whether to make scenarios/hypotheticals at the beginning of a game, after the deductions but before tackling any questions. It's tempting to do this in games where the deductions yield little concrete info. You obviously don't want to waste time drawing out scenarios if they're unnecessary - in fact, they can be a hindrance.

My advice in these situations is to quickly scan the question prompts. If there are a lot of conditional questions, then you probably won't benefit from scenarios, since you'll be plugging in variables for each question anyway. If there are several absolute questions (general questions like could be true, must be true/false, etc.), then scenarios might save you time down the line, especially if you have little to go on from the deductions.