Drilling old games question Forum

[olympia]

Is it necessary to drill old games that have not appeared on the LSAT for 10+ years or their type/style has only appeared once in LSAT history (such as the subway one from December 1992)?

[lucretius_]

Yes. There have been some games in the past few years that caught many test takers off-guard: the Virus game from June 2016 and the building exchange game from September (or December?) 2016. Both games were relatively simple IF the test taker was adaptable to novel rules. Personally, I think that drilling ALL games is important because it will prepare you to adapt to any strange games that could be thrown at you. Even if nothing offbeat comes up, you will have the confidence to attack any game regardless of the challenge.

Bottom line: assume any game is on the table and prepare for new challenges that may stretch beyond your preparation. The best way to do this is the prep with older/unique games that prepare you for a curveball, even if the game style itself is not on the test.

[AJordan]

It's all relative. If you can't do a simple linear game or consistently miss causation/correlation flaw questions then obviously your time should be spent there. If you're at the point where you're consistently going minus 0-2 on games then, yes, it's absolutely important to study the back catalog. I ran into a circle game on my real deal test and was very happy that I'd seen it before.

[olympia]

Thanks, everyone.

I’ll definitely make sure to drill those games then, especially since I’ve heard that games have gotten more weird.

[Mikey]

I think it's good to check them out as you never know if you will be hit with a weird game on test day.

When I did the sept 2016 test and got hit with the viruses game I freaked out and bombed it. For a retake I made sure to check out every weird/misc. game and idk, even though my final take didn't have weird games I was still glad I did them just in case. Looking at the viruses game afterwards, I had no idea why I freaked, that shit was weird but it was dumb easy.

Good luck

[olympia]

I think it's good to check them out as you never know if you will be hit with a weird game on test day.

When I did the sept 2016 test and got hit with the viruses game I freaked out and bombed it. For a retake I made sure to check out every weird/misc. game and idk, even though my final take didn't have weird games I was still glad I did them just in case. Looking at the viruses game afterwards, I had no idea why I freaked, that shit was weird but it was dumb easy.

Good luck

I’ve heard about the notorious virus game. Is there anything similar to it?

[Mikey]

I think it's good to check them out as you never know if you will be hit with a weird game on test day.

When I did the sept 2016 test and got hit with the viruses game I freaked out and bombed it. For a retake I made sure to check out every weird/misc. game and idk, even though my final take didn't have weird games I was still glad I did them just in case. Looking at the viruses game afterwards, I had no idea why I freaked, that shit was weird but it was dumb easy.

Good luck

I’ve heard about the notorious virus game. Is there anything similar to it?

hmmm... people have said it's similar to the PT40 (maybe PT 41) airplane game, but I think that game is a bit tougher than viruses. Can't think of any others off the top of my head, but without spoiling the virus game for you, I'll just give general advice that can apply to the virus game and some other weird ones in that you should just take what you know already about sequencing and grouping games and apply the weird game's rules to TRY to make it fit into a game board or something you're already used to. if you want a spoiler for how I approached the virus game and you don't care about spoilers then..

[+] Spoiler

if you think of the virus game as a slightly twisted but basic sequencing game, it literally becomes easy af

this is how I approached it and went -0 on a retake even though I never attempted the game on the real test bc of shock and being stupid

[olympia]

I think it's good to check them out as you never know if you will be hit with a weird game on test day.

When I did the sept 2016 test and got hit with the viruses game I freaked out and bombed it. For a retake I made sure to check out every weird/misc. game and idk, even though my final take didn't have weird games I was still glad I did them just in case. Looking at the viruses game afterwards, I had no idea why I freaked, that shit was weird but it was dumb easy.

Good luck

I’ve heard about the notorious virus game. Is there anything similar to it?

hmmm... people have said it's similar to the PT40 (maybe PT 41) airplane game, but I think that game is a bit tougher than viruses. Can't think of any others off the top of my head, but without spoiling the virus game for you, I'll just give general advice that can apply to the virus game and some other weird ones in that you should just take what you know already about sequencing and grouping games and apply the weird game's rules to TRY to make it fit into a game board or something you're already used to. if you want a spoiler for how I approached the virus game and you don't care about spoilers then..

[+] Spoiler

if you think of the virus game as a slightly twisted but basic sequencing game, it literally becomes easy af

this is how I approached it and went -0 on a retake even though I never attempted the game on the real test bc of shock and being stupid

Okay, great, thank you. I’ll definitely keep all of this in mind when I’m ready to take the September 2016 test.