going crazy!! re. inconsistency and still not getting it

standardizedcanbelearned

Hi all.

I know countless threads have been done on this topic, but I need a space to just kind of rant and get practical advice.

I have been studying for this test for who knows how long at this point. My biggest weakness is by far logic games. I completed the entire CC, took no short cuts in drills, etc., and I still can't zero out or get close to -3 on games. I foolproof, watch tutorials when I've missed games, and I still can't perform when I take PT's! For a while, I was consistently getting -5 or -6 when I would PT, and this past month I have been getting -8 to -9, as I was when I first started studying. Maybe the recent change (now PTing the PT's in the 70s) is causing this recent shift. When I take the test, I breeze through the first two games, but can't sufficiently work through the 3rd and 4th games. I figure out the game type, and I can see how rules interact with each other, but when I move to the questions, I can't work through them and completely blow it.

My main question is: what the heck do I need to do to get my scores up? I am so frustrated with this section, because it seems so intuitive and learnable, and after foolproofing sections, I always feel so dumb for having missed any in the first place.

P.S. I'm sitting for the July test, so I have a couple of months.

The Great White Shark

Are you missing a specific game type or is it just the difficult level that you struggle with? If the latter, I would try to focus your fool proofing on some of the hardest games out there like game #3 from PT 88 and game #2 from PT 31.

Journeyto99thpercentile

Hi @standardizedcanbelearned sorry to hear your frustrations with the logic games section. I know that when I first started studying for this exam, it was the bane of my existence, but that has all changed and I can usually go through a section missing zero, to sometimes upwards of 3, which is usually because I forget a silly rule or something. There may be others who will be able to offer you better advice than me, but honestly it just took me doing games over and over and then looking for deductions on those specific games that took me a little longer. Games for me was just a ton of exposure and repetition on games I was slow on. It just seemed one day I gained an intuitive nature about which rule each question was testing me on and then trusting that nature while drilling. I like what @Stellaluna said about finding those specific game types that seem to slow you down. Ask yourself what was so difficult about it. Go back and reverse engineer these games and break them down. Set the games aside for a few days and pick them back up. Hope this helps a little and I wish you the best of luck in mastering games.

standardizedcanbelearned

@"The Great White Shark" said:
Are you missing a specific game type or is it just the difficult level that you struggle with? If the latter, I would try to focus your fool proofing on some of the hardest games out there like game #3 from PT 88 and game #2 from PT 31.

Yeah its the latter. I breeze through the simple routine sequencing, grouping, and in/out games. It's always those weird ones, which is frustrating, because they're testing the exact same concepts, just not in the super cookie-cutter form.

lordofsquirrels

The weird ones test our knowledge of inferences and reading through tricky wording. Remember that super hard dinosaur game, I think it was somewhere in the 50s? You can brute force your way through it but it took like 15 minutes, but if you made a specific inference it was a 9 minute problem set.

We just have to do the work up front and that all depends how you want to use your time. I prefer to write out %90-%100 of all my game boards. That extra minute of writing it all out, cuts my time significantly when I'm doing questions. For example, there is a basic sequence game but it's a curve ball because of the setup. It's the stones and mulch with the dump truck having to be cleaned. Brute force your way through it first. Then on your second go around spend the time to draw out ALL the scenarios. See if that helps you make a difference.

If you have trouble making inferences, treat it like the puzzle game Rush Hour, where you are stuck in a traffic jam and you have to move other cars out of the way in a certain pattern to be free. All of the game pieces have certain levels of restrictions. I could get in to more detail, but it's gonna be a wall of text, so if you want holla at me.

ssuzhale

Prep Test 73 the third game has me stumped. The test is on the LSAC site as a practice test.
Please, if you may leave me a hint. I figured Y may only own one, W two or three, and T one or two. Beyond that, is it that T has to own the stable?? Thank you!

masi

@standardizedcanbelearned

For the harder games the test makers are testing your language and inference abilities. However, unlike simple games where a question usually test the first or second inference to be made, the harder games test inference within an inference (if that makes sense). Thus, harder game question are testing you on deep inferences (i.e 4 or 3 inferences in). Best way to practice for it is to grab the harder games and just do the inferences over and over and over and over and over. Trust me that is the only way. Good luck!

standardizedcanbelearned

@lordofsquirrels said:
The weird ones test our knowledge of inferences and reading through tricky wording. Remember that super hard dinosaur game, I think it was somewhere in the 50s? You can brute force your way through it but it took like 15 minutes, but if you made a specific inference it was a 9 minute problem set.

We just have to do the work up front and that all depends how you want to use your time. I prefer to write out %90-%100 of all my game boards. That extra minute of writing it all out, cuts my time significantly when I'm doing questions. For example, there is a basic sequence game but it's a curve ball because of the setup. It's the stones and mulch with the dump truck having to be cleaned. Brute force your way through it first. Then on your second go around spend the time to draw out ALL the scenarios. See if that helps you make a difference.

If you have trouble making inferences, treat it like the puzzle game Rush Hour, where you are stuck in a traffic jam and you have to move other cars out of the way in a certain pattern to be free. All of the game pieces have certain levels of restrictions. I could get in to more detail, but it's gonna be a wall of text, so if you want holla at me.

YES I actually just re visited that game a couple of weeks ago! You had to have two of the toys whatever the maroon color was and in, a red one had to be in, leaving two extra spaces in the in group, and two having to be out. Two of the toys could be in but had to be a certain color if they were blah blah... so hard. Funny that you'd mention that game. It was a ridiculous one for sure.

Yeah, I just finished pt 74 where I completely bombed the last two games, and after watching JY and how he spent so much time up front illustrating all the game boards... a light lit up for me. It's like, you can't brute force your way through difficult games without inaccuracy and spending like 15 minutes. I never really understood that until now, and I've been studying for a while. Honestly, I think I got too prideful, and thought that spending multiple minutes up front was a waste of time and that if I was smart enough/proficient enough in logic, I could just automatically make inferences as I worked through the questions. Not the case at all.. again, ironic you'd mention that you prefer to write out 90-100% of your games board, as just today I had that epiphany.

I guess the fear is: splitting when splitting isn't necessary and actually harms my games section by eating away too much time. Some games really are better approached by just going through questions, and I don't think I've had enough ACTUAL confidence in my LG skills to know when to or when not to split.

Love the rush hour analogy. I'll pm you; seems like you have a great approach to this test in general.

standardizedcanbelearned

@masi said:
@standardizedcanbelearned

For the harder games the test makers are testing your language and inference abilities. However, unlike simple games where a question usually test the first or second inference to be made, the harder games test inference within an inference (if that makes sense). Thus, harder game question are testing you on deep inferences (i.e 4 or 3 inferences in). Best way to practice for it is to grab the harder games and just do the inferences over and over and over and over and over. Trust me that is the only way. Good luck!

Hm... inference within an inference... yeah. That you for the bluntness. I'm definitely going to focus my time there and drawing out most if not all sub game boards for the games.

standardizedcanbelearned

@Journeyto99thpercentile said:
Hi @standardizedcanbelearned sorry to hear your frustrations with the logic games section. I know that when I first started studying for this exam, it was the bane of my existence, but that has all changed and I can usually go through a section missing zero, to sometimes upwards of 3, which is usually because I forget a silly rule or something. There may be others who will be able to offer you better advice than me, but honestly it just took me doing games over and over and then looking for deductions on those specific games that took me a little longer. Games for me was just a ton of exposure and repetition on games I was slow on. It just seemed one day I gained an intuitive nature about which rule each question was testing me on and then trusting that nature while drilling. I like what @Stellaluna said about finding those specific game types that seem to slow you down. Ask yourself what was so difficult about it. Go back and reverse engineer these games and break them down. Set the games aside for a few days and pick them back up. Hope this helps a little and I wish you the best of luck in mastering games.

Thank you for the reply and for the honesty. I'll definitely get much more disciplined with repetition. Ugh this test drives me nuts; I don't know why I keep coming back for more and why I like it so much! It's like a bad relationship- fighting day to day, changing things and working on what isn't working.. but I'm hopeful that I'll be able to "work things out" with the LSAT in the end instead of just getting my heart broken. :-)

Journeyto99thpercentile

@standardizedcanbelearned you welcome.Just learn to trust the instincts that you're building and dont put so much pressure on yourself. I know that is easier said than done, but it sounds like you have a great handle on games, just continue to make that section a masterpiece by putting in the work and trusting that work. Put up another post in a couple weeks with your progress and observations. I'd be happy to comment and give you some feedback on what you find out. Hope all is well.

Trusttheprocess

Hey,
Sorry to hear about your LG struggles... but here are my thoughts:
- I think if you have full-proofed LG games from 30-50s, then from the 70-80 series -0 to -2 range is very attainable. i dont think the games have changed much, but rather how you deduce inferences are a bit more challenging...they require a bit more skill
- secondly, an issue i see with a lot of my students who full proof is that they think "merely memorizing inferences in games" are good enough. i think one issue of full proofing that is not addressed is how to be critical of your process and see "what you are doing and when"... what do i mean by this is that every single step you do in LG has to be meaningful. to know whether or not what you are doing is meaningful means you have to be conscious and critical of what moves you are making upfront in order to maximize your control of games...

i am not sure if this helps but i hope you continue to kick ass and DM if you need any LG help!

joshowens16

I would seriously break down the specifics. I was really inconsistent with LR until I made an excel sheet and broke down which questions I was missing A LOT. Turns out I wasn't actually inconsistent, some sections/PT's just had more of the questions I sucked at and less of the ones i was really good at. The solution? Get REALLY good at the ones you suck at. Sometimes it isn't about just doing what your supposed to be doing, it is about getting really into it and breaking everything down so you understand what more you need to do.

standardizedcanbelearned

@Journeyto99thpercentile said:
@standardizedcanbelearned you welcome.Just learn to trust the instincts that you're building and dont put so much pressure on yourself. I know that is easier said than done, but it sounds like you have a great handle on games, just continue to make that section a masterpiece by putting in the work and trusting that work. Put up another post in a couple weeks with your progress and observations. I'd be happy to comment and give you some feedback on what you find out. Hope all is well.

Thank you so very much. I love this community - best to you in your 'journey'

standardizedcanbelearned

@joshowens16 said:
I would seriously break down the specifics. I was really inconsistent with LR until I made an excel sheet and broke down which questions I was missing A LOT. Turns out I wasn't actually inconsistent, some sections/PT's just had more of the questions I sucked at and less of the ones i was really good at. The solution? Get REALLY good at the ones you suck at. Sometimes it isn't about just doing what your supposed to be doing, it is about getting really into it and breaking everything down so you understand what more you need to do.

Haha - right. Get really good at the parts of the test I suck at. It's just difficult, you know? But the test is so repetitive that we all know deep down we can learn how to get very good and very consistent in our performance. Ah I cannot wait to just take the thing and be done with this part of my life (as much as I have enjoyed the journey).

standardizedcanbelearned

@Trusttheprocess said:
Hey,
Sorry to hear about your LG struggles... but here are my thoughts:
- I think if you have full-proofed LG games from 30-50s, then from the 70-80 series -0 to -2 range is very attainable. i dont think the games have changed much, but rather how you deduce inferences are a bit more challenging...they require a bit more skill
- secondly, an issue i see with a lot of my students who full proof is that they think "merely memorizing inferences in games" are good enough. i think one issue of full proofing that is not addressed is how to be critical of your process and see "what you are doing and when"... what do i mean by this is that every single step you do in LG has to be meaningful. to know whether or not what you are doing is meaningful means you have to be conscious and critical of what moves you are making upfront in order to maximize your control of games...

i am not sure if this helps but i hope you continue to kick ass and DM if you need any LG help!

Thanks so much for the reply. I heavily agree with and appreciate your second emphasis, specifically re. being critical of my process and seeing what I am doing and when. I've just been doing full LG sections the past couple of days, and immediately making notes on each game before I check the answers such as: "could have split another board here and I wouldn't have saved about 3 minutes" and "you got paralyzed here because of the fact that it was a rule driven game, but you didn't need to because there were only 3 rules to pay attention to" etc. And I've found a lot of reward in that sort of approach.

And thank you! I hope so too! We're all in this thing together.