LG is driving me crazy!

Return On Inference

So I'm posting here in part to rant, and in part in hopes that someone on the forum has had a similar situation and can offer some advice.

As you might ascertain from the title, this GoodValue™-Soduko of a section is the bane of my existence at this point. On my diagnostic, I started with a -20+. I had no clue how to solve any of the questions. After studying diagramming and using the 7sage CC, I was able to bring it down to -15 to -10, but I cannot seem to break above that plateau. I've been studying for a little longer than a year now, and I've made significant progress in both RC and LR, but LG just won't budge. This is especially frustrating because almost everyone on the forum says that LG is the easiest area to improve -- it just makes me feel stupid every time I go -15+ on a PT.

For the past month I've been foolproofing games, 6-8 hours a day, but I'm not seeing any progress. I've FP'd all the games from PTs 1-12, 35-40, and 60,61,62. When I foolproof, I do the games until I'm -0 and under time on day 1, then I do the same the next day, and then I wait a week and attempt it again. Only when I can get -0 and under time under all three scenarios do I discard the game. So far I haven't had any problems -- I'm able to remember the inferences and complete the game under timed conditions even after 1 week of not seeing the game.

The problem is, I feel that every single time I take a PT or a timed section, the test writers do something that I've never seen before, and I just don't have the intuition to handle the twist. If they give me an unfamiliar rule, I almost invariably represent it inefficiently and make false inferences, flunking the game. If it's a miscellaneous game, I'll almost invariably set the game board up incorrectly -- tanking the game. For example (Spoiler regarding PT61), on PT61 S3 G1, I didn't realize that the two groups were interchangeable (I had never seen this before) so I didn't split, tried to brute force and went way over time and flunked the game.

At this point, it seems inevitable that I'll choke when it comes to the real exam. This is especially frustrating because of how much time I've spent studying my other sections. I'm currently averaging -1.5 per LR section, -1 per RC section, and -12 per LG section. It took me hundreds of hours of study to get LR and RC to where they are, and it feels as though this damn LG section is just destroying that progress.

Has anyone else been in a similar situation and broken out of the rut? I apologize if the post sounds overly negative, but I just feel so defeated by this section. I would appreciate any advice or encouragement that ya'll could give, because I sure need it.

BinghamtonDave

I started similar to where you are. This is a situation that I believe demands a tutor. My recommendation would be to consider one. I believe your particular situation is going to demand a very specific diagnosis of your LG issues (diagnostic before implementation of tailored strategies.) A good tutor should be able to tell as you go through a game for them what is lacking.

Best of luck moving forward and congrats on the improvement in the other sections. You've got this.

David

westcoastbestcoast

Hmm. I used to face a similar situation but with enough practice, I was able to build that intuition. If you notice JY's explanations, he would go through difficult LGs and LG questions strategically, choosing to combine the most restrictive rules to make the most inferences and choosing to test answer choices that would make use of said rules. I was able to go from only getting 5 to 9 questions right to averaging minus 1 and minus 0 on LG. I got minus 2 on the official. Practice and heavy foolproofing got me there

Kateryna

you gotta skip questions/games u are unfamiliar with. like pt 61 when u saw a game u had zero clue about how to solve you have to just move on. lets say you decide to not do one game completely and focus all your energy and time on other three and get -0 on three of them, you will miss max 6-7 questions by skipping one game. its not perfect but better than -10.