Are Logic Games from PT's 1-16 representative?

AurBoreal

For anyone who has experience doing the games 1-16 - are these games representative of later games on the LSAT? If I am considering ponying up the money to buy the paper versions of the tests: are these good games to practice on? I have games from PT 17 through 76 - and have done about 30 PT's worth of games now... Obviously in a world where time was an unlimited resource I wouldn't ask this question and would just do them. But there's 3 months until September and I need to do and BR 19 PT's...

7sagelsatstudent180

Some are not representative because they have mapping games and other never used again game types but I would do them as experimental sections for the remaining PTs. That way you can kill two birds with one realistic testing stone.

Cant Get Right

Clean copies of the out of print PTs from 1-16 are very expensive. If you don’t have access to the PDFs, you may have to do some cost/benefit analysis. Every game section is highly valuable. I’m not sure about “representative” but there are some weird games which I think are really beneficial to encounter. You may not see those specific game types, but they’ve been throwing weird games at us recently and having experience with handling something you’ve never seen before is incredibly important. Plus, most of the games are just regular games, so you get a lot of games that are totally relevant to the modern Games sections. So you’ve just got to decide if it’s worth the expense based on your available resources.

Or, just go back in time and get the PDFs.

DumbHollywoodActor

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Clean copies of the out of print PTs from 1-16 are very expensive

Actually, that’s only partially correct: https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0979305047/ref=oh_aui_detailpage_o01_s00?ie=UTF8&psc=1

But as usual, @"Cant Get Right” gets the rest of it right. While you’re not going to be able to memorize any inferences from those early weird games, getting experience with these weird games, being able to discern whatever pattern is in the weirdness, will be very helpful.

Alejandro

practice 'em!

Cant Get Right

Good catch @DumbHollywoodActor . Those tests should definitely be obtained!

I was thinking about these: https://amazon.com/Actual-Official-Out---Print-PrepTests/dp/B012TXC0SA/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466697723&sr=1-3&keywords=lsat+prep+tests+1-6

Darth Jurist

I have found the PT's from 1-16 to be very beneficial. The early '90s games are tough, some even regard them as the hardest games out there. Using the "Fool-Proof Guide" on each game from each test really helped me out.

I think the LR and RC from PTs 1-16 are good, the LR are of questionable worth, the stems are really oddly worded and don't follow normal protocol (although the logic is still the same).

As far as obtaining, just check Amazon. If you see one of the PTs going for an astronomical amount, add it to your shopping cart and let it sit. I have found that if I wait and keep tabs on pricing, they eventually go down. Merchants don't like to hold on too their merch too long.

draj0623

I found copies of games from PTs 1-20 in the PowerScore LSAT Game Type Training book (roughly $25). The only downside of using this book is that it organizes all of the games categorically and not chronologically. Other than that, I thought working through the LG bundle was beneficial. I don't think they are all representative but, overall, they do provide great practice on drawing inferences.

cmelman95

@"Cant Get Right" said:
Good catch @DumbHollywoodActor . Those tests should definitely be obtained!

I was thinking about these: https://amazon.com/Actual-Official-Out---Print-PrepTests/dp/B012TXC0SA/ref=sr_1_3?s=books&ie=UTF8&qid=1466697723&sr=1-3&keywords=lsat+prep+tests+1-6

Holy shit!

Nicole Hopkins

@7sagelsatstudent180 said:
I would do them as experimental sections for the remaining PTs.

Agreed!

Cant Get Right

@cmelman95 , at one time there was a 41-50 going for $3,999 on Amazon. That seems to be where it maxed out, but until LSAC either brings the PDFs back or rereleases them in print; these 20 tests are going to continue to sell for obscene amounts. There are options to get them broken down into question types like @draj0623 mentioned, but as far as full PTs these are essentially unavailable.

Nanchito-1-1

I'm going to be sooooooo mad if lsac brings back pdfs. I've started ripping my 10 Actuals apart page by page to make copies -_-

Heart Shaped Box

@"Cant Get Right" said:
at one time there was a 41-50 going for $3,999 on Amazon

Do ppl actually buy it..? I'm genuinely curious.

Cant Get Right

I’m not sure @beyondsudi . That one is definitely an extreme. Every time I’ve looked, I’ve always found at least a few for around $700 (typically in “used - good” condition). So I’d be surprised if the $3,999 sold. I don’t think the market for them is quite so small as that yet. Although, the $3,999 wasn’t just some crazy person, that was the Amazon Prime option. So, not sure what analytics Amazon uses to generate their pricing, but I would assume they are very sophisticated. Wouldn’t be shocked to see the actual sales prices inch in that direction as books are removed from circulation though.

I do feel like LSAC will eventually see that the benefits of offering PDFs far outweigh the detriments, or at least that refusing to sell them doesn’t really affect their availability. I think this PDF ban will represent a relatively small window in the lifespan of the LSAT. But it is our window, so we must make do with it.

Heart Shaped Box

Agreed. All of a sudden banning something that has been widely spread online for years does nothing but incentivizing "copyright infringement" activities. Ppl gotta do what they gotta do. Plus there is just no point. I was kinda lucky to catch Cambridge PDF before they were gone but missed the mysterious 7sage "bundle". Better than nothing tho.

MrSamIam

Funny how all you have to do to price gouge is slap the label "out of print" on the book. You can still find clean copies of the earlier, out-of-print PTs on Amazon and eBay for a fair price.
Some of the games aren't Representative of what you're likely to get on your official take. That said, I would still run through them at least once. There's nothing stopping the LSAC from tossing an outdated game onto a newer LSAT.
I've also noticed that for many of the games found in PTs 1-25, J.Y. refers to them as "unusual."

ChiTownGuy

[Admin Edit] Not laughing at this recommendation. Please review TOS.

cmelman95

@"Cant Get Right" said:
at one time there was a 41-50 going for $3,999 on Amazon. That seems to be where it maxed out, but until LSAC either brings the PDFs back or rereleases them in print; these 20 tests are going to continue to sell for obscene amounts. There are options to get them broken down into question types like @draj0623 mentioned, but as far as full PTs these are essentially unavailable.

Simple economics: when a good's scarcity pushes its price high enough, people will resort to a black market to obtain it. This is the story whenever a body rations a valuable commodity. In this case the black market is piracy. Why LSAC can't see that they're forsaking revenue and encouraging piracy by banning PDFs is beyond me.

The only rationale I can think of for banning PDFs is to prevent illegal distribution; but the PDFs are already there to be illegally obtained by the very same people who would have sought to illegally obtain them anyway!

[Note: This post is not an encouragement to pirate LSATs. Do not pirate LSATs.]

BinghamtonDave

To answer the original question, I have found 1-16 not only fairly representative but also containing just the right amount of "weirdness" that has afforded me an opportunity to really test how I react when the LSAT throws me a curveball. I think the skill of keeping your head on straight when faced with an oddball game is really valuable (given something like December 2015's game 3.) And it appears to me at least that the early tests have their fair share of odd games. What is coming to mind without doing much searching is: the very first LSAT game on PT 1 being a circle game, the Radar detection game from PT 15 and although it appears to be outside of the purview of the question you asked: PT 18 Game 3 about connecting subway lines was a nightmare for me. I can speak from personal experience, when a section has something weird in it for games, I have in the past panicked. Bumping into some odd games on the older sections has really helped me mitigate these issues. So what I am recommending here is not necessarily a method for applying inferences to crack open the early games (which is certainly possible given the number of entirely modern-isn games in the 1-16 range), but practicing the "Game day" feeling of not really knowing what to do on a game, not panicking, skipping the game, completing the section and then getting back to the game to minimize the damage and save your section. The skills I have learned from skipping a weird game then finishing the section, then coming back and saying to myself "Ok, I'm going to answer 3-4 of these 5 questions correctly) can save a disastrous section and make it a -2 section (which I can live with!)

There is a risk with this approach. If time is limited, I wouldn't recommend it. This might spark off a bit of a debate but I am fairly confident that something like PT 10 Game 3 isn't something you have to worry about per se, but the feeling you might get when you read it might be something you can mitigate by exposure! lol.

good luck!

Admiral Yummy

@doneill3389, I totally agree - some of the early LG's are freaky. I'm running through the logic games bundles (no longer available on the 7sage) and some of the geographical games throw me for a loop. What I've learned is that you have to keep moving and sometimes you have to jump around, so the unrepresentative games can help you train your response to uncertainty. With all of this being said, @CUNY_2017, if I didn't have the LG bundle, I probably wouldn't bother tracking the games down for purchase - I'd just focus on the stuff provided by curriculum and the practice tests from PT36 onward.

BinghamtonDave

@"Nathan Turley" it looks like we have stumbled on the same technique as far as these old games go! As an aside, I have always wondered how people in 1991, 1992 etc actually dealt with these games during their administration. I've had a hard enough time dealing with them with the help of a supportive community of like minded enthusiasts on the internet and with access to 24 or 25 years worth of material to draw on! hahaha

Admiral Yummy

@doneill3389 Yeah, I wonder that too. I love it when I encounter a weird game, nope it, come back to it after completing the other games in the set, and suddenly the weird game's superficial difficulty melts away.