If you go on one of those windsurfing web sites where the seasoned pros give advice to newbies, you see a lot of conversations like this:

Newbie: “I want to learn how to windsurf. I found someone selling a Ten Cate Sprinter windsurfer for $100. Is this a good board for a beginner?”

Pro: “No! That thing is over 30 years old. It will be too hard to learn anything with a board like that.”

So, there I was a few weeks ago, a total beginner who had never windsurfed before, paddling out into the Chesapeake Bay on an old Ten Cate Sprinter windsurfer. Why? Read more

While in general on the logic games section, game types can be divided into two categories–grouping and ordering–there are the occasional “hybrid” games. These are the ones that, like mutts, are the sweet little offspring of both.

A hybrid game might look like this:

Over the next week, Miley Cyrus will have three performances, one in Boston, one in New York, and one in Washington, D.C. Her repertoire of dance moves includes twerking, gyrating, shimmying, and lunging. She will perform at least one of these moves during every performance, and every move will be included at least once. Her performances meet the following conditions:

She performs in New York sometime before Boston.
Her New York performance includes at least three dance moves.
She doesn’t lunge when she twerks.

Do you recognize why this is a hybrid game? Think about it before reading on.
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Recently I was in the car with some friends. I was sitting in the backseat and wasn’t driving. The person who was driving didn’t know where she was going. The person sitting in the passenger seat was supposed to be navigating for her, and he was doing an absolutely horrible job. I could tell he was driving her nuts. This is the kind of stuff he was saying:

Okay, you need to make the third right up here. I mean you could turn right before it, like now, but you don’t have to—oh, wait, you did. Okay, so now that we turned here, hmm. Well, we could keep going straight or we could take the next left, but we’ll need to end up taking a right eventually—why did you take a right?! No, I said we need to eventually! Since we’re now going back the other direction, we could take a right or a left, but somehow we have to turn around…

See how annoying that is? As it was happening, I thought of logic games (because I’ve been doing this way too long). It seemed like a great illustration of a very important logic games principle. When it comes to diagramming, do not write what could be true and what must be true all in the same place. That is, don’t mix up what has to be true with what might be true.

In the same way that it is confusing to receive driving directions that mix what could happen in with what has to happen—“we could turn here but have to turn before four streets up but we could also turn on the next street”—it’s confusing when you look at a diagram where slots 2 and 3 are filled with the letters M and R, but M has to go in slot 2 and R could go in slot 3.

For this reason, it’s best only to write in what must be true, and save what could be true for side diagrams, or “clouds” as we call them at Manhattan LSAT (bubbles with possibilities listed in them)—basically, any diagramming tactic that denotes “this is different from what must be true…this is only what could be true.”

If you’re used to writing it all in one place, it may take some time to break the habit. But start now. It’s worth the struggle.

Could believe Lady Gaga and the LSAT have something in common?!

I recently had a conversation with a student about what he refers to as “sleeper rules” in games. Sleeper rules are the rules that don’t jive with the rest of the rules. They’re the odd man out, the lone ranger. In a Western, they’d be mavericks. On a playground, they’d be last picked. They’re Lady Gaga in the 2000s and Madonna in the ’80s. They’re the green circle next to the four blue … You get it.

We see sleeper rules all over the places in games, but a really good example is the standalone numbered-ordering rule in a relative ordering game: you are given seven rules, say, and six of them are relative (“X is before Y but after V”). The last one is not. It reads, “V can’t be third.” How many of you have gotten to a rule like this–one that you cannot easily incorporate into your diagram–and decided, I’ll just keep it in my head? Aha! Caught!

My guess is that it’s come back to bite you in the bum, as the ol’ “just keeping it in my head” is known to do in logic games.

While it may be your intuition to just keep it in your head, for most of us the best way to handle sleeper rules is actually to do the opposite. Rules that don’t conform to the expectations of the whole game should generally be treated like royalty. Give them a prominent spot on the page, circle them, underline them, shine a giant spotlight on them–that is, make them graphically obvious, and do so close to your diagram. In the example above, this might mean putting a big slash over “3” underneath the V in your diagram, or a big “V NOT THIRD!” note alongside it.

Obvious, nonconforming rules should be notated in the same way: conspicuously. This is the safest way to handle them.

When it comes to Orientation questions, always let the rules be your guide

The first question on a logic game often asks for a possible ordering (or assignment, or grouping) of the elements. We call these Orientation questions, and they can usually be answered by simply applying the rules, one by one, to the answer choices. For example, if there is a rule that Sam arrives fourth (yay, simple rules!), scan the answer choices to check for Sam. There’s almost certainly going to be one where he’s not fourth—get rid of that one.

While moving through the rules this way is, generally, a reliable and efficient approach for Orientation questions, we also teach that you can use your diagram. On some games, such as relative ordering, this is a good idea. It can be faster.
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Many LSAT takers find the Logic Games section of the exam to be the most challenging. Why?

It’s because “Analytical Reasoning” (aka Logic Games) is the section of the test that is most unique to the LSAT. Sure, maybe you’ve done a few logic riddles or Sudoku puzzles in your free time, but outside of the Manhattan LSAT geek squad, I know very few people who spend time solving Logic Games ‘just for fun’.

Mastering this unfamiliar section of the exam requires a lot of time and practice, but there’s good news: Logic Games are extremely learnable! With proper preparation, you can actually develop in to a good enough player of Logic Games to count on this section to boost your score.

Regular readers of this blog will have picked up some helpful hints about how to tackle games (see below):

• Necessary v. Sufficient: The Flash Mob Example
• Logic Games: The LSAT is Not Two-Toned
• Binary Grouping: Is It or Isn’t it?
• Could Be a List v. List of What Could Be
• Rule Equivalency Logic Games Questions

So how does one get good at these things, aside from picking up some free nuggets of advice on our blog? While practicing as much as possible is important, it’s equally important to practice well. Pick up a book (I personally favor the Manhattan LSAT Strategy Guides, of course) and learn how to think about organizing the different elements that games are constantly throwing at you. Learning the proper strategy to practice will make the hard work that you put in to mastering Logic Games that much more effective.

If games seem to be your main bugaboo heading in to October, consider signing up for the Free Trial Class for our upcoming  Games Intensive Online Summer Course taught by, Brian Birdwell. This class will focus exclusively on Logic Games and how a 170+ test taker goes about deconstructing them.

On To The LSAT!

For those of you who just walked across the stage – particularly those who managed to do so without face planting – we salute you.  Graduation ceremonies are the important culmination of 4+ years of careful study, even if it may have been in the art of carousals, the opposite sex, and parental money laundering.  In honor of all the new graduates out there, we have themed our latest Logic Games Challenge around the pomp and circumstance of the season.

Try out the easy or hard version of our new logic game, submit your best answer explanation to our forum, and you could potentially win a fabulous prize (either $200 off a course, or some books) from us.  Prizes are given to the best answer explanation for both versions of the game, as well as to one randomly selected participant.  So far, only 33% of respondents to the hard version of the challenge have been able to answer all of the questions correctly.  Do you have what it takes?

Rule Equivalency Questions are Meant to be Broken

The LSAT is a funny beast. On the one hand it stays very consistent – it’s still paper and pencil, still given simply four times per year, and still requires a number two pencil. But, on the other hand, it keeps throwing us small curve balls, small changes in what it asks of us. And these changes happen in every section: Logical Reasoning no longer has multiple questions about one stimulus, Reading Comprehension now has comparative passages, and Logic Games, around the year 2000, entered the Modern Era (read the intro to our Logic Game Strategy Guide to learn what that is). Excitingly, there’s a new Logic Games curve. It’s the introduction of a new question type – Rule Equivalency questions.

If you’ve taken one of the more recent LSATs, you might remember a question that asks something like “Which of the following, if substituted for the rule that . . . would have the same effect . . .” Some of these were quite easy, some were rather tricky, and they were all novel.

If you have already learned the basics of each of the games, take a look at our White Paper on this new question type.