Consistently Running Out of Time on Logic Games

katherine_lamb

Hi all,

I'm wondering if you have thoughts and advice for someone who is consistently running out of time on the logic games section of practice tests. On my most recent practice test, I did 3/4 games and got every answer correct on those that I got to, but completely ran out of time on one of the games. In blind review, I was able to get all the correct answers on that 4th game, in under 8 minutes.

Maybe it's partly a confidence thing? I feel like I'm checking answers very carefully and maybe should trust my diagrams more...? I'm not quite sure. Any advice for how to proceed would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much

MrSamIam

As a general rule of thumb: The more time you spend up front, the less time you'll spend on the questions. Part of this has to do with how confident you will feel about your board and rules if you spent a fair amount of time setting them up.

Your best option is to Fool Proof the games (using games from PT 1-35). You may also want to force yourself to try a few games where you don't double check your answers. In other words, as soon as you find the answer, circle it and move on. Try that, then try your current method. See which one is faster. More importantly, note if there is a significant difference in accuracy - are you getting less correct when you don't double check the answers? If not, you're probably just spending too much time trying to justify, to yourself, the correct answer.

Cant Get Right

Agree with @MrSamIam . Ideally, you’d try out not double checking your answers and find that your accuracy doesn't suffer. Games aren’t like LR where you need to eliminate each incorrect answer choice in addition to identifying the correct one. You need to be able to set up your board with enough skill and confidence that once you see an answer that works, you move on without even reading the remaining options, much less carefully eliminating them. You may occasionally make errors which you might have found by checking every answer choice, but even in the absolute worst case scenario, that is never going to punish you as badly as missing an entire game.

Fool proofing will further increase your speed. You should reach a point where you’ve just seen everything they can throw at you so many times that all of their attempts to create something challenging are just adorable. I’d also recommend supplementing fool proofing by developing a system to repeat games. My system is to, after the first time I fool proof a game, repeat it again in a day, in a week, and in a month. Figure out what works for you.

And If you haven’t already, watch some commentaries. They’re really useful for getting a sense of how skilled gamers pace themselves.

katherine_lamb

Thank you both so much!

danielznelson

To avoid tempting what you just read, I'll stress what cannot be stressed enough - redo and re-redo LG sections until you're nailing them, both on accuracy and time. Not sure how many untouched PTs you have, but they're precious, and if you can't sufficiently move through LG sections you've already done, you may want to slow down your PT-taking pace. You mentioned confidence being an issue. This is huge for every aspect of the LSAT, of course, but nailing timed LG sections really will boost your confidence, even if you readily acknowledge that they are by default easier to master than never-before-seen sections. If you're still struggling with time after a long period of time, maybe take a breather from LG. I did this a long time ago, and I became much more fluid with games after my break.

stepharizona

@"katherine_lamb" said:
Maybe it's partly a confidence thing? I feel like I'm checking answers very carefully and maybe should trust my diagrams more...? I'm not quite sure. Any advice for how to proceed would be greatly appreciated! Thanks so much

A lot of this will come with practice and its great to do the games over, but do that to get used to the patterns. When you can think, of I've seen this before, you instinctively can move faster. So think of the games like that, sure you'll get faster fool proofing those games, BUT you can make really big strides when you can recognize the pattern of the game.

Also push yourself to go faster, especially on a game 1, Technically, there is 8:45 to complete each game, but we all know games take longer or shorter. But for that first game try for 7:45 or 6:45.

Also, do a timer drill where you only have 8:45 to complete each section and you HAVE to move on at 8:45, do this on a test your fool proofing. It helps you learn the timing, it becomes instinctive. Oh I am taking too much time on this game... move on, or im almost there. Its like a time sink in LR. You have to learn what 2 minutes is...