If I had known the LSAT would let me move waffles with my mind, I would have started studying in high-school. That puts the vast majority of super powers to shame. So practical and tasty.

Hi @jhaldy10325 Just wanted to confirm that the other upcoming review dates (specifically this Saturday and next Wednesday) are accurate - I'm taking in December so I don't want to burn any of the really recent tests yet, but I'll absolutely join in if you're reviewing 40's/50's.

Yeah, I'm just worried because I've used up all the 50's now, my error rate hasn't decreased and I want to save 60 and up for full-timed tests. I just feel like BR, which I've relied on so heavily in the past, isn't working anymore and I don't know what to do.

Sure, I'll eventually discover whatever subtlety I missed, and I'll be able to avoid it in the future, but they'll always just create new subtleties. The majority of the time, I can narrow it down to 2 answer choices, but beyond that, I'm at a complete loss.

I think to answer that correctly, I'd have to ask you to clarify what you mean by inference rules/tricks/notations. I'm only a free subscriber so I gained my foundation from the Powerscore books, but I rely mainly on the techniques J.Y. teaches.

If I'm understanding you correctly:

As far as I know there aren't really "rules" per say that relate to inferences. For example, you're not going to find a rule that says, "When you have two if-->then statements you can make such and such inference." Inferences result from pushing rules up against each other. It's something that you just get better at with practice and drills.

Tricks are not something you should be concerned with. This is one of those "silver bullet" concepts that a lot of prep companies propagate. You're not going to find tricks. And if you do, they will be very rare. Relying on tricking...isn't reliable. Instead you should focus on building solid formal logic skills, learning the different game types and practice making inferences.

I will say that seeing how J.Y makes his notations is very helpful. Many of the books like the bibles have very "stiff" notation styles. When you get to games that twist it up a bit, this can cause you to panic. I remember before coming to 7sage seeing weird games and thinking, "OMG how do I notate that?" One thing I learned from J.Y. is that some rules just don't notate well so you just have to write down what you think best describes the rule.

@tanes25413

said:

What I am trying to get at is there doesn't seem to be much up front info other than going through the actual game. So are we supposed do develop our own methodology as we do LG's and review the explanations?

One thing you'll realize after going through a bunch of games is that the most important thing is that:

1.) You realize what type of game you are playing

2.) Once you realize that game you are playing you can setup the game board (different types of

games have different types of setups)

3.) You can push rules together to make inferences.

IMO these are the 3 most important things. Other than that, there's actually not much to a logic game. J.Y's videos are helpful because they help you get better at each of these 3 steps. A lot of prep books make it seem like you have to have a terribly complicated methodology for each game type. When I read the bibles that was probably the most intimidating part. But there's actually not much to the different game types. You don't have to develop much of a methodology.

I found someplace on the internet that classified logic games by type for games 29+ and I've been using that to drill. It's helped immensely. Rather than just doing random games, you can focus on one type specifically. I wish I could remember where I found it, but it was just a free list someone had put together for the benefit of others.

@476.rizeq Yeah, I'm finding that the higher numbered tests have about 3-4 LR questions each section with different logical structures than those in the 40's. Not drastically different mind you, but enough to eat up some time and add an extra couple wrong answers. For example, yesterday I did a LR section from PrepTest 56 and got to question 23 with 8 minutes left. I was pretty psyched because timing has been an issue, but it seems like something I'm gradually overcoming. Mind you, the last couple questions were crazy difficult and ate that time up.

I'll also mention that the main reason I asked this question is that due to the way most prep companies structure their courses, there seems to be this widely held conception that 3-4 months is the standard amount of time you need. The more I read, the more this seems to be false.

@gregoryalexanderdevine723 Yeah, I mean I still might take the September test, I'll just have to see how the next month goes. But I strongly suspect I will hold off until December. I had qualms about doing so, but I've read several of your posts about postponing and they've solidified how I'm going to make my decision, so thanks for that! I'm not going to rush anything.

And I have found that my gains have slowed. I didn't realize how much harder it is to gain points in the later stages of prep. It really is all about making sure you can answer EVERY possible question the LSAT can throw at you. That's why I said my score varies. I'm sure on some PrepTests I'd score 165 but on others I'd score below 160.

@476.rizeq I use 7sage for logic games and for forum help. When I first started I bought all the Powerscore Bibles and went through them religiously. They gave me a good foundation, however I all but abandoned the LG advice given in Powerscore as J.Y's methods are far more intuitive. The bibles did however give me a good understanding of the LR question types. I decided to start my prep with LG simply because formal reasoning underlies absolutely every aspect of the LSAT. I've become very good at Logic Games and this has helped my LR immensely. I built my LR skills by BRing and frequenting the Manhattan forums which can be very helpful. I went from about 10 wrong each section to about 2 or 3 wrong each section, although since I've reached the Preptest 50 range, that has changed. It seems the higher numbered tests have much more difficult LR sections. I had started RC but pulled back after my LR scores went down. Right now I'm focusing on perfecting LR and LG and I'm very close. After that, I intent to incorporate RC back into the mix.

@quinnxzhang542 I'm using the second way which is the way J.Y. uses in his Logic Games Videos.

@jhaldy10325 ahh that's right. Acceptable Situation questions! Yeah, I think I'm going to take the extra couple seconds. In the off chance that something actually does occur twice, it ends up taking more time. It was just something that I caught myself doing and I wanted to be sure to eliminate any bad habits!

@civnetn459 I'm not sure I entirely understand. I didn't peg that line in the stimulus that uses the word "generally" as a principle affecting sentence. It's just saying what would happen if people generally didn't buy the advertising. The principle seems to be in the last sentence of the paragraph, and it uses the word "any."

And I'm not sure I agree that (A) is only focusing on what 1 person would do. It's a general principle meant to apply to everyone, not just a single person. It's just describing what "one" (used in the general sense) should do given circumstances.

Not trying to be difficult here. It just really doesn't make sense to me. I thought the only real difference between the answer choices was the use of "many" in (B). No?

@7sagestudentservices Right, thanks for the heads up.

To be clear about Rule #3 regarding copyrighted content. What exactly does this mean? Obviously, not posting full questions, but are we allowed to post word for word excerpts of answer choices?

@civnetn459 Thanks so much for this explanation. I usually frequent the Manhattan LR forums to see explanations and none of the 11 replies were as remotely helpful as yours. In fact, they made what is really a simple problem, incredibly more complex. This makes so much more sense.

I suppose my confusion came from wanting (A) to be worded as, "The meteorologists station forecast rain correctly more often than did..."

I should have realized that since I'm supposed to take what's in the stimulus as true, any increase in the number of forecasts from the meteorologist's station would necessitate an increase in correct forecasts, proportional to greater than 50% of the forecasts.

@doneill3389668 The whole problem is confusing me. There's absolutely nothing about it that I understand.

@aaronwfrank90 Thank you for breaking down the stimulus into it's components. I got that far, but I'm having trouble seeing how they relate to each other and then to the answer choices.

(A) I understand the first part "it is always laudable to do something helpful to someone." The second part however, I do not understand. How can we tell that not doing something laudable (forwarding the number) would be wrong if one has led the person to believe one would forward the number.

The second half of this answer choice basically contains the principle, "If you tell someone you'll do something and then don't, that is wrong." When on Gods green earth were we told that? As far as I can tell, nothing in the stimulus shows conditional reasoning.

(B) Wouldn't this be correct? I don't understand the explanations for why this is wrong.

C D and E I eliminated easily. However, I just don't understand A and B.

I'm also finding that process of elimination is a much lengthier process to use for RC. Even in questions that don't ask using most/least strongly supported terminology, there will be answer choices that seem like they could go both ways until you rule out EVERY OTHER answer choice.

I mean normally in LR I think I use a combination of elimination and inductive reasoning. I'll eliminate 2 to 3 answer choices via process of elimination and then between the remaining answer choices, 1 will stand out.

Thanks for all the answers guys. Very helpful. But I think I may have misstated my question a bit.

I take a time RC section, then BR, but is BR even helpful for RC? Because my difficulty is not getting the question correct. It's getting the question correct within the time frame. Once I go back to BR my answers, I'm going to get ALL of them correct. No question there. Because of this, I don't think my issue is understanding why the right answer is right and the wrong answer wrong, it's doing it in the time frame required.

So how should I tackle this? Should I even BR? Because I feel like I'm wasting time BRing since I'm going to get them all right if I BR anyways! BR is supposed to help you understand why right answers are right and wrong answers are wrong. If I'm able to do that, but just not in the time frame....then what?

I don't know if I'm explaining myself properly here...