What are y'all's strategies for attacking them? I finally got the basics down, and if I've seen an exact (or near exact version of the game) before, I can usually kill it with time to spare.
But it's those weird games. Those games which mix it up in a way that I've never seen before. You know what I'm talking about. I'm talking about games which match sequencing with an in and out game. I'm talking about games in which you have to draw a freakin' star to finally figure out how to do the freakin' puzzle (I'm lookin' at you, Preptest 38, Game 4!) I'm talking about unconventional charting games which don't look all that similar to any of the games I've done before (Preptest 39).
So what are you strategies? Appreciate any feedback.....
Comments
Good luck Grace!
Anyways, assuming a student has have the basics down, I'm willing to bet the major block-in-the-road for miscellaneous games is avoiding panic attacks. He/she reads the stimulus, but doesn't actually bother to figure out what it says. Stay calm and have confidence in your intuitions. Don't forget that if the game doesn't say you can't, feel free to just throw down some game pieces into your board. Sometimes (but only sometimes) you just have to pick a solution and go from there (some examples would be some of the circle games and game 4 of PT 72)
My recommendation for dealing with those games is to make sure to use a lot of the older tests (1-20) in your prep. Many of these have nontraditional game types and practicing taking these games in a PT environment (not an isolated LG practice) will help prepare you on how to encounter completely new game types in the middle of a 4 hour test.
I tossed it into this lesson so more of your fellow 7Sagers will see it:
http://7sage.com/lesson/logic-games-habits-for-speed-and-accuracy/
I have own up to some of the fault here. The LSAC for over a decade hadn't thrown weird games at us that I assumed - the irony - that it was a thing of the past.
Anyway, for the weirder games, please ignore in the videos when I say smugly that "oh this is not likely to come up on your test". Assume everything is fair game for the LSAC.
@goegoe10, there's no list of the "weird" games, but most of them are in the LGs from PTs 1 - 35, which is in the LG Bundle here:
http://7sage.com/addons
The LG Bundle is included in the Ultimate course.
Intuition comes with practice. LG is by far the most learnable section on the LSAT - with enough practice, I'm willing to say that pretty much anyone (and certainly a high scorer like yourself) can consistently get -1 or -2 wrong on each section. How long have you been working on logic games? Do you drill untimed games / redo games you struggle with?
I gave game 4 on prep test 16 a look - this was an unusual game, for sure, but honestly I thought it was pretty easy compared to some of the other games out there. What gave you trouble specifically? There are only 3 rules, all of which are pretty straightforward. The setup itself is easy - just a simple 5-slot ordering game, where the order changes depending on how many and which kind (either odd or even) of rounds have occurred. I think the big mistake people make on this game is to hesitate before looking at the questions - they spend too much time looking for a huge inference when they really should just be using the rules to rule out wrong answers / find the right answer.
For the questions you struggled with, I recommend using the question stem to create a hypothetical and then using the hypothetical to cross off wrong answer choices. When doing an open-ended game with only a couple rules (i.e. a game with a lot of possibilities), it's important not to spend too much just "thinking" about the answer. Your time is much better spent writing out possible solutions (literally, just write out a solution. Any solution, so long that it works. You'll be surprised how much this helps for the question you're on as well as questions down the line).
Hope this helps! Let me know if I something I said didn't make any sense.
Using the stem to create a hypothetical and then cross out wrong answers never actually occurred to me as a strategy. I'm sure I've done it, but until I read your comment just now, I don't think I've ever done it consciously. I know I've used stimulus to build a hypo to look for the RIGHT answer, but I don't know that in open-ended games I've ever used it to look for WRONG ones to eliminate.
Glad you wrote this out! Will hopefully help me in future games if I remember to try it.
-Joe
Thank you so much your advice. You must be a logic games genius because your advice all makes sense. I will definitely do the create a hypothetical strategy. Your right, I spent too much time looking for an inference and tried to write out all the possibilities -a disastrous waste of time...and I still could not handle the questions. I think when it comes to open ended games I tend to think a lot more slowly because I don't have a good strategy in approaching the questions and because I doubt myself constantly ("is there any rule that I missed?" is a constant worry in my mind).
This is kind of embarrassing to admit but I've been doing the fool proof method since around April, so it's been about 4 months now...after seeing an initial 11 point jump increase in my LG score I have since stagnated and for about 2 months now and still average around -6 for logic games....This is frustrating because I average around -2 for RC(well, at least for the older tests, I heard the more recent RC's are more harder), and around -5 for LR combined...so if I mastered LG I could finally reach my goal....the thing is I've spent more time preparing LG than for LR and RC, and yet that is the section which is still bringing me down...
Oh well, I'm gonna believe what you're saying that just about anyone can get down to around -2 per LG section, and I hope I can reach that score by September, which is when I take the test. I still have about 2 months left, which I'm hoping is enough. Thank you for reading my rants and responding. You are like the LSAT Oprah. I wish you the best score on your test!
Try it!
Haha, well I'm glad what I said makes sense. No need to stress yourself out over logic games - you're scoring in the 95th percentile, so you're clearly extremely smart and extremely well-equipped to take on (and beat!) the LSAT. Not sure if this is relevant for your situation, but I remember struggling to trust myself when working on a logic game. My mistakes early on haunted me way longer than they should have - essentially, because I struggled with logic games so much on my diagnostic, I always worried I was making a mistake even though I had taken plenty of lessons and had a solid grip on what was going on. This became kind of a big problem because my lack of confidence slowed me down and made me more susceptible to stupid mistakes. I struggled with this for a while, but I was eventually able to improve and now I'm reasonably upset if I get -1 on a LG section. Two things helped: first, I started to do untimed logic games. This took the pressure off and helped reduce my test-day anxiety. Second, and probably more importantly, I would read a stimulus, diagram the rules / make any inferences, and then stop to watch the 7sage video. Getting that immediate positive reinforcement of "hey, look, I was worried I did this wrong, but I actually did it right" over and over again is a great way to boost your confidence.
@joegotbored-1
Awesome! Glad it worked! It's a useful tool, especially when you're working with a game without a lot of up-front inferences. I used to panic if I couldn't split the board, but now I'm just like "oh, okay, this game is about using the rules to make hypo's. No biggie, I can do that."
@mark.simonds77
There is a worksheet on the "Logic Game Explanations" page that groups all of the games from prep tests 35-70. The Cambridge "Miscellaneous" packet from PT's 1-39 contains the games listed below. Honestly, though, the best practice for rare games (and for games in general) is to practice, practice, practice. Do every game that's ever been released, and then go back and do them all again. The more experience you have reading different stimuli (and deducing the relevant inferences / working their respective questions) the better prepared you'll be for test day.
PT 1 - Game 1
PT 2 - Game 3
PT 4 - Game 4
PT 6 - Game 3
PT 6 - Game 4
PT 8 - Game 2
PT 9 - Game 4
PT 10 - Game 3
PT 11 - Game 4
PT 12 - Game 4
PT 13 - Game 4
PT 15 - Game 2
PT 16 - Game 4
PT 18 - Game 3
PT 18 - Game 4
PT 20 - Game 3
PT 21 - Game 2
PT 30 - Game 1