PT38.S2.G4 - musicians perform each of exactly five pieces

tanes256

Hey, guys. Has anyone noticed any funky games such as this one in recent PT? JY said don't worry but there seems to be a trend of the older style games coming back. How would I ever know to draw a freaking star?!! I'm sure it could be solved other ways. I just did a single layer sequencing game board but of course, JY's way was much easier to see. This game def took me more than 11 mins!
https://7sage.com/lsat_explanations/lsat-38-section-2-game-4/

Heart Shaped Box

No worries, I didn't see that star either. I don't know if anyone has at the first attempt. It's more of a product of review for teaching purposes as opposed to a practical hands-on first time approach, just my opinion tho. Even to this day I don't practice that game with the genius star diagram, (I've done that game at least 10 times) for I know there is no way I would be able to reproduce that logical brilliance during timed condition at the first attempt, so i don't practice what I won't be able to do. Instead, what I get out of a game like that is the importance of rigorously following the rules under such a situation. We only have two rules, so the instruments position placement is the key in solving this game. Another key inference is the focus on the first and last spot, as the slot before/after it has to share an instrument with it or else they would be stranded per rule 1. So what I did is very similar to yours, I just jot down the 5 pieces on top, and the two instruments they come with underneath each one, then just freaking rigorously follow the rules lol watch the shared elements among instruments in terms of their positions using my fingers to cover the rest up reducing visual clutter when I start to lose track. My first attempt was 14:55 back in June 21 last year, (I don't think I actually finished it even with 14 mins! lol) the last 11th attempt was 6:56, March 16 of this year, and a bunch of 7 mins ish in between.

You are definitely right there is a trend with weird games coming back and I believe J.Y. did clarify in some of the videos telling us just ignore his "foolish comments" (quoting his own words haha) of "don't worry about it" cuz we won't see such and such in modern LSAT, etc and he specifically added "nowadays anything goes". So I think when he made those videos, the game sections were pretty consistent hence why he made those comments, but then just like you pointed out, they get more and more wild ever since, now it's like almost guaranteed at least one "weird" game per administration.

I'm nowhere close to master the game sections or anything for that matter actually, so I don't think I'm in a position to "advise" anything, but what I have personally benefited from this kinda very few rules weird games is that if you just intensely, rigorously follow the rules, and you'll do just fine. I remember reading a post back in the day about "minimizing the damage" from David (Binghamtondave) that I thought was a great point. Say, even if we rigorously followed the rules, but we still got 1 or 2 Qs wrong, so what? It's just 1 or 2 points, and that maybe the only points you lose from the entire game section which still puts you in an optimal state of the test overall. Plenty of 170+ scorers lose 1 or 2 points in the game section and they still score in the 99th percentile. And "bc" we have rigorously followed the rules instead of getting froze, we would mostly likely be able to grab the majority of the points, and for a hard/weird/curve breaker game like this, it's a victory on our part, not the test writers.

I hope this could be of any help. Good luck!

tanes256

@"Heart Shaped Box" thank you for this! I too hesitated about even trying this with the star because I know there's no way I'd see that under timed conditions. It is familiar to me now though so who knows?!