Games Section Strategy

[isoffan21]

Hi. Normally I am able to get though 3 of the games with 17 or 18 right but lately I have been focusing on the reading comp and logical reasoning and feel like my speed has slowed down to two or barely 3 games (now getting 12-14 questions right). So, I have reviewed all types of games to get a grasp on the concept and have been doing maybe 6 game sections (6 thirty-five minute sections a day). There are four reasons I think attribute to this self-defeating strategy: (1) I find myself r trying to identify all the templates which when used wrongly can be self-defeating (maybe I am too thorough? I find that sometimes you don't need to make all the inferences before you start the game, although it's ideal. );(2) I also find myself it takes me longer to make an inference so it takes me longer to answer a question; (3) I get stuck on a question and spend 3 mins on a question...is this a bad strategy? ); and (4) the fourth most common reason is that I end up starting with the harder game that has the most questions, so I end up spending 15 minutes on it (ouch!) and complete two games. Any advice for me? Games used to be my strong suit. How do I get back what I lost? I normally don't spend more than a few minutes on a set-up. I know how to do the games but I don't know if I have hit a brick wall or what. I used to do three games with ease.


Also any advice regarding Identifying the templates solutions?I know sometimes you can answer the questions with out writing out the templates.

It's weird because some games I can answer in 8 or 9 minutes others I am stuck on it four 15 minutes. Maybe it's also some test anxiety. I think my strategy needs to be modified. What would your strategy be regarding your approach to games and how many and which ones to attack?

Also, is it safe to say that games have been getting easier from 2000 onward?

Distraught LSAT studier

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

Hi Vinny,

That's a pretty open-ended question --

It seems like you've studied quite a bit already for the exam --

Here's some information that I think might be useful for you. Please don't hesitate to follow up.

1) The games have a wide range of difficulty, and this difficulty range is very unpredictable. Your second, third, or fourth game might be hardest! So, if you are only getting to three games, a section that goes (easy, hard, hard, easy) will feel very different for you that a section that goes (easy, easy, hard, hard) -- this is likely the biggest culprit when it comes to inconsistency on your performances.

2) Different games do take different amounts of time. Some games take me 4 mins, and others 10, and I've been teaching this stuff for years. So, don't fret over games that take longer -- make sure your timing strategy accounts for them.

3) Some games are made for you to do most of your work on the set-up, and others are designed for you to do most of your work at the questions themselves. It's fine to spend three minutes setting up a scenario-heavy game. However, there are other games where you spend a minute setting up, and the key to success is being able to play around with the elements quickly and accurately at the point of the question. The big takeaways here -- don't be overly dependent on your diagram, and work on recognizing front end vs back end games.

4) It is never okay to spend 3 minutes on a question. Don't spin your wheels -- the less time you waste being stuck, the better the chance you will get to all four games, which, if your goal is to get 17 or 18 right, should be your planned strategy (i.e. it's easier to get through all 4 games while missing the hardest q's in each game, rather than trying to be perfect at 3 games and running out of time for the fourth).

5) It's definitely true that post-2000 games ARE easier-- this doesn't mean the games have been getting easier.

6) Your instincts about getting out of practice with games and needing to get back into rhythm are right on -- it really helps to be in "game-shape."

In general, taking a ton of exams/sections is not a very efficient way to improve or get in shape. Two things I'd encourage you to consider

1) Focus on mastering individual games. Do the same game over and over again until all the decisions are automatic. Really understanding one game is far more significant than casually practicing (and not taking learning away from) twenty games.

2) Focus on getting great at each of the individual steps of your process --

We break up this process in four --
1) recognizing game / conceptualizing general diagram
2) notating constraints
3) making inferences
4) attacking each q correctly

Of course, you work on all these skills during the context of solving a game, but it's also very useful to isolate and work on these skills separately. By the way, one resource you may want to check out for this individual skill work is the LSAT arcade.

7) Finally, beyond the questions you've asked -- if you are taking the exam in June, I recommend you work towards developing a more flexible timing strategy, and setting a goal of being fast enough / adjustable enough to get to all four games.

One sample flexible timing strategy: 7 minutes per game / 7 minutes in the "bank." Bank minutes are minutes you use any time a game feels more difficult, and you think an extra investment of time might be worth it.

Hope all of that helps. Again, please feel free to follow up if you need any further advice!

[isoffan21]

Thanks for your advice. I actually do three games and try to skip the hardest game...but that's sometimes hard to do. I can mostly figure out many of the games but I think I spend sometimes too much time on set-ups. For instance on the game that deals with set-up that stocks the aisles in the supermarket (June 2001, 1st game:Jill, Kurt, Larisa, Many and Olga are the clerks in the supermarket. The supermarket has 9 aisles, etc. ), I try to write out all the possibilities when many times the questions could have been answered without having drawn up all the templates or possibilities. Drawing up the templates eats up all of your time especially if you make an error and you have to fix it. I have a hard time differentiating when to identify the templates and when just use not laws in advanced linear games. For i.e, in the Dec. 2010 first advanced linear game (motel operator), I drew out all the possibilities when I do not think all of the questions even required the set-up which ate up 17 minutes of my time.

Another example, for June 2004 (Civic Parade) game, you are given two rules: (1) there are exactly 6 groups in this year's civic parade: f,g,j,m and t...at least 2 groups march behind the pupeteers and one group marches behind the firefighters, the gymnasts are the 1st, 2nd or 3rd group. In my set-up, I tried to diagram all the possibilities and chose p--m as the controlling unit and perhaps f-h should have been chosen. I did not know which to use as the control group in the templates. Mistakes like these eat up all my time an can be fatal. Should I have not chosen p_m as the control group for the set-up? In other occasions, if you do not identify the possibilities, it makes you inefficient and it would take you 20 minutes to finish up a game. Unfortunately, the test is timed.
So can you offer me any advice? It is so weird because I could easily get 16-18 points(which was not too long ago either when I would get 16-18 points not more than a month ago) on a game section completing three games and now I range from 10-14. It's so weird because games were my strongest suit.

Can you help?

Any advise is well appreciated.

Thank you!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT2]

It seems a lot of people follow the "skip the hardest" advice, and so I guess it's worked for people --

What I will say is that even though I fancy myself as somewhat of an expert on games, I don't have a whole lot of confidence in my own ability to see which games are hard, and which ones are not.

I can certainly tell certain games are hard, just because the scenario is gnarly or the rules don't come together. There are other times, though, where games that looked difficult to begin with turned out to be easy once I figured out what they were talking about, and others (many others) when games started out looking easy enough, but soon turned into killers.

Even though I have trouble predicting which game will be hard, I have no trouble deciding during course of the game. For me, the tell-tale is about the second or third problem. If I understand the game well, I'll roll through the first few q's quickly. If I don't, I'll have to slog.

If the above rings true for you, a flexible timing strategy could really be a good match for you, and it can take a burden off of your shoulders on test day (because you won't have to think about deciding, and deciding correctly, which game is hardest). In a flexible system, keep some time in a "bank" and get better and better at knowing when to give yourself a bit of extra time and when you ought not.

Additionally, it sounds to me like a lot of your issues stem from trying to solve games in ways they are not meant to be solved -- in particular, from taking back-end games (that is, games where you aren't told a whole lot up front) and trying to force them to be front-end games (by spending extra time up front exhausting possibilities and whatnot).

Here's one way of thinking about it that might help:

Imagine that the average LG problem requires about 7 or 8 key deductions (it may not seem like they require so many, but that's because you make many of the deductions without thinking about it). Let's imagine this as eight hurdles you have to jump to get to the right answer.

- - - - - - - -.

Some games are designed to that you do most of your thinking up front, so that by the time you get to the q, you only have a few more hurdles left.

XXXXX---.

Other games are designed so you clear very few hurdles up front, and have to work quickly on the back-end.

XXX-----.

What is the key to success on these back-end games? Flexibility and comfort -- you have to comfortable enough with the diagrams, notations and such to play around easily. And also techniques such as framing or exhausting possibilities, which allow you to cheat these games a bit (by anticipating, and doing ahead of time, the work that would be required in the questions), are certainly useful tools.

It sounds like you may be overly-dependent on these up-front skills. I'd recommend you try going back to the games that took you so long to set-up, and consider short, clean, easily-understandable ways you could have set them up, and walk through how you could have invested that time in answering questions.

It's a mistake to think you should get to a set level of understanding in the initial set-up. I think it's helpful to think about it in terms of investing your time -- in reviewing games, consider how they were designed, and try to gauge for yourself when it made more sense to invest more time in the set-up (and why) and when it didn't. If you can fine tune this sense, it can be a big tool for you, and something that gives you a significant advantage over other test-takers.

One thing I strongly want to urge is to STOP SPINNING YOUR WHEELS! This is the biggest waste of time on the exam. Give yourself time to think, but don't force it when things aren't there.

Sorry for the length of the response, but I totally feel your predicament, and I would really love to be of help. Please feel free to follow up if this doesn't hit your issues on the mark, or if you have further questions.