So I've got three weeks left in the Army before I start terminal leave and I've finally reached the end of the learning curriculum and the only thing that stands in between me and 4-5 months of PTs is the LG Bundle. As I finished up the last few LG sections in the curriculum I saw a lot of people were having the same questions, concerns and other issues with how to approach their LG studies and utilizing the Fool Proof Method and since I don't really have a job or much to do at work anymore I thought I'd offer up my solution and strategy to address some of these problems. I think the Fool Proof Method is awesome, but I tweaked it very slightly for my purposes and I think it could help some people out to employ a similar strategy. If this helps you in any way, please pass it along to anyone else who may be struggling.
Top concerns I have seen from other people:
1) I think 10 copies of every LG is wasting paper.
2) I don't have enough time to do all the LGs.
3) I want to know the categories for every LG I'm doing.
4) When do I do which games and how often do I do them again?
Before I answer these questions directly, here is what I've actually done to set myself up for success. If you were fortunate enough to get the LG Bundle before LSAC made it vanish, then you have all the games from PTs 1-35 which is 140 games. If you have anything less than that, just scale down what I'm prescribing, but everything should still go along as I outline here. I got a few 2" 3-ring binders and filled them with document protectors. I then began with PT 1 and printed out 4 copies of the first game (more on this later), which if you have the LG Bundle is 8 pieces of paper since 7Sage was kind enough to format the old LGs like the new ones with 2 pages and plenty of room to work. If you don't have this I'd say add a piece of scratch paper in with each game to give yourself extra space to simulate what you'll have on the LSAT. I then placed all 4 copies of the first game in a document protector and put a sticky note on the front denoting the following: PT#, LG#, and then a chart with 1st-4th attempts on the vertical axis and Date/Time/Score on the horizontal axis (more on this later as well). I then repeated this process for each subsequent game so that now I have a binder full of 4 copies of each LG, although due to the volume of paper you'll need at least 2 or 3 binders like I mentioned above.
All the information I collect on the sticky notes I will put into a very simple Excel spreadsheet I have designed to track my progress. If you've read this far and are still interested, feel free to message me your email and I will send you a blank copy of the spreadsheet I designed so you can use it and tweak it how you see fit. In a nutshell it has space to log the date/time/score for every attempt for every LG in the bundle.
The first attempt is simply that, just my first shot at a new LG. I time everything with a stopwatch so I know how I'm doing, but I don't set a timer because that doesn't really make sense to me since I'm working to standard and not to time. If you time yourself and stop then you won't know how long the game is actually taking you, so always use a stopwatch (I hope this is common sense at this point). So once I finish I record the date and the time it took me and I blind review and then check my score. I then record only the score I got while timing myself since this is LG and there is no way you should get LG questions wrong during BR since you can just brute force the answers if need be if you really don't understand something. If you're missing LG questions on BR then in my opinion there is something seriously wrong in your methodologies and you need to perhaps relearn the basics unless you just misread a question or something like that.
After recording the data on the sticky note and transferring it to my spreadsheet I watch JY's video explanation and go over the game and then I put that LG in the back of the document protector it came from behind the clean LGs and take out the second copy. I then make my second attempt, timing myself, doing my BR, recording all data, and then rewatching the video if necessary. I then make my third attempt the next day, and my fourth attempt I make a week later, always following the same methodologies as I did on the first attempt.
My thinking is that if I'm really serious about this, I should be able to conquer any given LG in four tries. Two in a row should see a huge time and accuracy improvement since it's so fresh in my mind, then the third and fourth attempts simply reinforce this improvement and the retention of the strategy. This also makes you more efficient since you know that each LG is simply a 7-8 day practice exercise. Trying to schedule out an additional 6 attempts to do all 10 copies just seemed ridiculous to me given that there are 140 LGs to do in the bundle. In my mind it's better to be able to develop mastery more quickly and then encounter a wider variety of games in order to make sure you're ready for everything. Of course, if there is an incredibly hard LG then obviously that may require additional attempts, but this should be a rare exception to the rule.
So to revisit the concerns I noted above, here are my solutions:
1) Obviously you're going to have to get over using some paper, so cutting that down by 60% should be a good tradeoff to help get you into law school in my opinion. And once you get your 170+ you can go recycle all that paper!
2) If you don't have time to do all the LGs, just scale down the above and do what you have time for. If you know it will take a week turnaround per LG and you can do 5 per day, then you know you can get at least 30-35 done in a two week period depending on if you take a day off or not. At this rate you could do more than 100 LGs before the June LSAT if need be (but you should probably be focusing on PTs). If you have to scale way down I'd recommend randomly picking PTs from 1-35 and doing all the games in that PT so you shouldn't end up doing all of the same kind of question and will get a better feel for the variability within a given test.
3) In my opinion you absolutely should never record the category of any game you attempt. If you do, it will negatively influence your work since you will know going in to use a chart or to sequence and group rather than just deducing what needs to be done. When you take the LSAT it doesn't say GROUPING GAME in bold type at the top of the page, so you should practice like its the real thing, which means no knowledge of categories.
4) I think I addressed this well in my strategy above, but it bears repeating: Make 4 attempts: 1st - Today, 2nd - Immediately afterwards, 3rd - Tomorrow, 4th - In a week (either a week from attempts 1&2 or a week from your 3rd attempt, that's your call schedule wise).
Anyways, I know this is a bit long but I hope it helps at least one person because as a longtime lurker I have gotten a lot of help from the community here and I wanted to try to do my part to give at least a little bit back. If anyone is still reading this and wants more details or wants photos of my binders or that Excel spreadsheet, feel free to hit me up anytime. Best of luck to all the June LSAT takers and to everyone else in your studies!
~Pacifico
P.S.- Though I am more than happy to help anyone here with any issues they may have, I will not send you the LG Bundle as that would violate both 7Sage and LSAC regulations. Please don't put me or anyone else in that position because I am trying to help people here and won't break the law to do so. Thanks for your cooperation!
P.P.S. - I don't check my inbox on here anymore, but if you have any questions you can DM me on Twitter @pacificosoldati and I'll do my best to help you however I can.
126 comments
After completing the CC, I drilled LG for about a month. That really helped me. However, I was still having trouble and was generally unorganized in my studying so I decided to read the LSAT Trainer the whole way through. To my surprise, the trainer helped me a lot in improving logic games. I am not organized enough to do the PMO way (unfortunately as I know organization is key). I am also at a place where I get 1 or 2 wrong at most on any game and that makes it hard to watch the video the whole way through.
But anyway, some tips that helped me from the trainer were these:
1) fight the desire to draw hypotheticals for every question you think deserves one. you think it will be faster to do this but it actually takes more time. This applies mostly to CBT questions. I find that when I think through the answer to their completions I am faster as a whole on the game than when I write down hypotheticals. the trainer says top scorers in general only have to draw a hypothetical (so after you draw your master game board) once or twice in any given section.
2) instead of listing the rules I simply write them down in strategic locations. I put some above or some below and I combine when I can and it's to my advantage. I also don't write 1,2,3,4, etc under the slots like JY does in his videos. I know he says that it is mostly for instruction but in any case it really helped me to streamline my diagrams and get rid of clutter. Clutter on the paper translates to clutter in my mind.
3) one thing the trainer states is that if you can't think of a good way to diagram a rule in a few seconds or if you have any doubt about what your diagrammed rule could mean, just write it out. I began doing this for weird rules and it really helped. Of course, this is the exception. in general rules should be diagrammed.
4) JY emphasizes this but I guess it took reading a whole other book for it to sink in, keep track of your out pieces. this is especially true if you have a sequencing and grouping game (and there is only one out piece). since it's only one, there is the temptation to assume you'll keep it in mind. but it's best to include it in your diagram since it is probably going to be a powerful part of the game. something out, everything else has to be in.
5) I really like how the trainer uses capital letters and lower case letters. this also helped me to simplify my master game board. instead of having dogs (a,b,c,d) and cats (e,f,g,h) I put ABCD and efgh. basically when you have different elements that each go into positions or if you have subsets you can use lower case letters.
6) know when to SEARCH for the right answer and when to eliminate. I'm still trying to habitualize this one myself. MBT/MBF are instances where you want to search for the right answer, so run it through and find out what you know for sure and find that in the answer choices. for CBT/CBF you want to eliminate wrong answers.
7) combine timing from JY and trainer. I use JY when I'm drilling individual games. I time myself with his suggested time. For PT I try to keep to the trainer's timing guidelines. (I'm at work so I can't post the exact ones here but I'll put what I remember). after first game you should be at the 7min mark, after second game at the 16 min mark, after third game at the 25 min mark, after fourth game 35 min). these are totally flexible depending on where the hard games show up but it's a good benchmark.
LG are totally learnable! lastly, since I hear the newer tests have a wild card game I think it's important to keep a flexible way of studying/improving on logic games. Maybe we should not focus so much on categorizing them and just try to master how we approach them and do as many as we can.
8) always keep calm/don't freak out!
Bumping for any fall test takers still needing help with Logic Games.
> @katehopgood113 said:
> Does anyone have a copy of Pacifico's spreadsheet they could send me? I would like to use it in order to track my progress.
> @jniuboston201. Tharp said:
> @katehopgood113 I would also like one! I have made one of my own, but it's kind of wonky :( that said, if no one has it, I can send you mine.
Hey guys! Sorry for the late reply, here is the spreadsheet on dropbox courtesy of @leo555 :grin:
https://www.dropbox.com/s/a9rdnxphn55ax0k/Logic%20Games%20Bundle%20Tracker.xlsx?dl=0
I just want to say this post is part of 7Sage history. The strategy works and helped e to go from -9 to -0 on my last PT.
I'm bumping this up because a lot of people have been asking/mentioning fool proofing Logic Games recently (due to the large number of september takers starting their studies more than likely).
The point of doing the game right after watching the explanation is not that we don't remember the correct answer but we are trying to build the habit of doing the work correctly to get to the correct answer. This is where honesty is really important, you may remember the correct answer choice but can you still work out the logic to get to it?
And the answer might be yes! I still remember the steps to get to it and that's actually fine. Your takeway from doing it is to start building the habit of learning the process of how to arrive at the correct answer choice. That should be the focus when you do the game again.
Also, be honest, what did I learn here that I can take away to my other similar games? That's key to improving on games.
> @charlesteitelbaum371 said:
> just to get it clear that means doing the games with @974 strategy requires you to do the game 4x on day 1? 1x then BR then again and BR again?
I personally don't follow Pacifico's strategy.But I have been told what I do is very similar. I do the game first. Then I BR it. Then I see how I did. I then watch JY's explanation video regardless of how well I did and compare his method to mind. I try to make sure that I was using the most efficient method as well as getting all the inferences. If I did the game under-time and I got all questions correct then I am done with the game. If not, I do the game again and repeat the process above. I keep repeating the process until I feel that my setup is efficient and I got it under time and all questions correct. So the number of time I do this is not predetermined - its based on my learning. Then I table the game for the next day and then next week. If at anytime I don't meet the standards of how this game should be done I repeat the whole process again. I hope this helped. : )
Yes, absolutely! When I consciously approach the answer choices in a strategic way my timing improves significantly. To really embrace this method, I would suggest doing games and then re-doing them forcing yourself to approach the answer choices by searching.
Another thing I would add to my list above is to read the set-up AND the rules before you begin diagramming. This helped me with short term memory and I also think it helped me with making inferences which can be challenging. Additionally, it helps me to not rush the beginning phase/set-up which as JY and the trainer emphasize, can be (is?) the most important part of tackling any game.
invaluable.
they have different strengths which makes sense since one is in book form and the other is in video. I learn better by reading so it was really useful for me to use the trainer. But the video have been extremely helpful. I think I understood the trainer better BECAUSE I went through the core curriculum and watched a bunch of LG videos beforehand. I'm a fan of using both.
I'm afraid there will always be a chance that your actual LSAT exam will include a board setup you've never seen before, even if you did every single game released. Some setups are just unique (the pattern game in 72 and the star game in 38 spring to mind), and there's no guarantee there won't be one in the next LSAT. The only way to prepare for that is to make sure you can nail the normal games quickly (there will usually be 1-2 easy games in a section with a weird one) and that you are confident enough with writing down the rules, seeing quickly how they interact and making inferences that you can at least "brute force" the difficult game even if you don't come up with the elegant setup that would break it wide open.
And the only way to get there is practice. A lot of games (preferably all), and a lot of time (several months at least). You are on a good path, you seem to be spending enough time with the Fool Proof method, now you just need to keep it up for a while.
The Fool Proof is not about having seen all the game boards possible, it's about practicing enough that the mechanics of setting up a board and looking for key inferences become internalized. You don't have to think about "how do I represent "if A or B are in C is out?" anymore, and you are able to intuitively know that if A is before B then A can't be last without having to write it down anymore. And because the mechanics are automatic, it frees up time and mental energy to think about the more complex aspects of the games. It's like playing an instrument - no amount of reading about how to play the violin or watching a master playing it can substitute for practice. You don't have to have played every single musical piece available, but you have to have practiced lots of them for a long time to be able to attack a new one with skill and confidence.
Well today was the first day of following this attack strategy and I'd say it went well. I did all the LG from Prep Test #7, first time around most were not that great, usually around 10min to complete each, with game 2 being 16min LOL, yeah basically because I didn't see that Thursday being excluded means I misinterpreted a crucial rule involving consecutive calendar days...sigh reading mistakes.
Then I watched JY's explanations, and did all the games again, recorded all the times, and I did Game 1 in like 3min, and the rest in roughly 6-8min, so overall I did amazing.
Now tomorrow I will do them once more, then in a week and I'll have mastered the games.
Although this is a painful technique, I can see how it will definitely be beneficial.
Where I usually mess up in doing a game the first time is either misinterpreting a rule making the game super difficult, or didn't read carefully. I do agree with you @974 that timing is really crucial, b/c I mean if you give yourself infinite time you can just brute force through every single game, so I will continue timing myself.
@hhk4294 it looks somewhat like that, just organized slightly differently. If you want to see it just PM me your email.
@569 I got through the first 13 PTs (52 individual games) and was feeling pretty good so I started to PT. My general approach was to save as much drilling material as possible during the curriculum so that I could use it between PTs. I just go back now and then before a PT to do a new game to just get my mind right because I suck at the beginning of a PT if I'm not in test mode, so now I drill an RC passage, a game, and a problem set (usually NA since those are often my worst). I've averaged less than two wrong on LG and most of the ones I get wrong are reading errors and not so much logic errors, so for now I'm just saving the bundle for when I hit a rough patch of LG. When I was heavy into it though I was doing 5-10 games a day, which is two attempts a piece for first time games. Honestly if I had a laser printer at home I'd probably end up doing all of them in less than a week simply because I enjoy doing them.
> @medardotreyperez225 said:
> maybe this is a dumb question, but I don't understand the math on this. How do you get to the "you can get at least 30-35 done in a two week period" number?
>
Yeah that's what I am wondering too. If I understand correctly, this is roughly the schedule @974 is suggesting:
Monday: 5 new logic games
Tuesday: Do Monday games again for second attempt
Wednesday: 5 new logic games
Thursday: Do Wednesday games again
Friday: 5 new logic games
Saturday: Do Friday games again
That adds up to 15 games in week 1
In week 2, I can redo the games I started on Monday on Monday, the games I started on Wednesday, on Tuesday and the games I started on Friday, on Wednesday. That leaves me with Thursday, Friday, Saturday, in which I don't really have enough time to do the first attempt and the next day attempt as well.
'
Am I missing something?
Thanks for bringing this back onto the discussion forum homepage! I’m starting this method today in preparation for September test 💪
In comparing @974 's M.O. ("PMO") with JY's Foolproof Method ("FM") it seems to me that they're substantially different, and that PMO is not merely a very slight tweak of FM.
FM scores the game and watches the explanation immediately, with the purpose of memorizing inferences. PMO does a blind review before scoring and watching.
FM repeats indefinitely as necessary until mastery; then repeats once the next day. PMO repeats only once on the same day, then once the next day, then once a week later. PMO assumes mastery within those four attempts over a week -- not unreasonable, but maybe not applicable to everyone.
PMO's use of blind review seems to me a critical difference; and JY's emphasizes memorizing inferences while that is at most only implicit in the description of PMO.
I'm posting this to solicit suggestions as to what criteria to use in choosing between these two methods.
I've also been flirting with the idea of answering the acceptable situation question before I make my master game board. Granted, I would only attempt this for questions that I had no idea what to do after reading the rules, but I think in such a situation it's possible that this strategy could help to loosen up my thinking about a difficult problem. I don't have any actual examples to cite where I would do this or have done this, it's just something I've been tossing around in my head.
Is your spreadsheet similar to the Cambridge LG Tracker? I imagine you have additional columns for attempts past 4.
http://www.cambridgelsat.com/resources/spreadsheets/lsat-logic-games-tracker/
Oh it's nothing special, just very simple with three columns (Date, Time, Score) and four rows (Attempts 1-4) like I said, so for example if you're starting with PT 7 and made all four attempts over the past week your note should look something like this, minus the inherent left justification of the comment formatting:
PT 7
LG 1
Date Time Score
1st Attempt 13JUN 11:52 4/7
2nd Attempt 13JUN 6:48 7/7
3rd Attempt 14JUN 6:34 7/7
4th Attempt 20JUN 6:50 7/7
Hope that helps, let me know if you have any other questions!
@974 . I employed a very similar approach to yours with the LG bundle, sheet protectors and all. I completed the bundle a couple of months ago. Currently, I am in the PTing phase of this whole process but now that time has passed, I revisit the games often just to make sure my understanding of each one is still as solid as it was a couple months ago. I also coupled the 7sage curriculum with the LSAT Trainer by Mike Kim, as suggested by other 7sagers, which put all of JY's lessons into perspective for me, especially the LG strategies that the Trainer teaches you to utilize for eliminating wrong answer choices. Anyways, Good luck studying!
I was originally thinking that I was going to fly through the fool proofing really quick, but that did not happen. However I did realize that if I just keep at it and keep studying the inferences than I do progress forward and begin to see them, and that is all that matters. Even though doing 1-35 5-10 times seems daunting it does seem to produce fruitful results even if only slowly.
Does anyone have a copy of Pacifico's spreadsheet they could send me? I would like to use it in order to track my progress.
People have been asking about LG, so bumping this to the top!
@974 i did this for every game I've encountered (I have all the next 10 books by the LSAC which excludes some tests but that's still a hell ton of games). Did your method and boom. LG used to be my weakness now I actually look forward to every LG section bc they're fun to me! Do this guys, anyone struggling. You gotta have the patience to re do every game you miss until you can do it with your eyes closed. It's learnable and very possible to master these inferences.
@kyletenn484 it's unrealistic, or at the very least not necessary, to aim to finish every game under 5 minutes. 7 minutes on hard games is really moving, so nice job on that! No need to put even more pressure on yourself to finish them in under 5 minutes. I suspect that strategy would be more counterproductive than anything else because you're going to be internalizing 6 or 7 minutes spent on a tough game as a failure. Mindset is key! Work hard, but don't overdo it.
Good luck!
Great to hear things are going well for you. As you get further into PTs they definitely mix it up so I wouldn't get too psychologically invested in how they start out. I've taken PTs that the fourth game is the easiest and it can throw you for a loop at first but if you just stick to the basics and use your skills you'll be fine.
I started the trainer about a month ago. I was wary of LG in there at first but I love the use of shapes, vertical listing of elements and use of lowercase letters for subsets/qualities. Definitely worth integrating some of Mike Kim's techniques into your 7Sage LG approach.
@mmaritzagarcia303 I did the first third of the bundle before I started PTing, but that is only about 40-50 games or so, which is super easy to knock out in a few days for your first few run throughs. After that I felt comfortable enough to start PTing and I wanted to save the rest for drilling later. Now I try to drill 1-4 games before a PT along with an RC passage and some LR questions, just to get myself in the groove.