Speeding up on easy logic games

[CourtneyH949]

Hi!

I'm a week and a half out from test day, and I'm struggling with logic games timing. I've practiced all of the game types a bunch, and I've gotten confident with being able to visualize and solve pretty much any game I come across, but I still am solving the games too slowly. The easiest games are often taking me about 10 minutes to solve. What can I do to speed up on the easiest games to save time for the harder ones?

[Laura Damone]

Hi there!

Here are a few suggestions.
1) Employ the 10-second rule: if you don't have a clear path towards the answer in 10 seconds, start plugging and chugging.

2) Even easier games have hard questions. Consider skipping a question or two if it's very confusing or time consuming (I'm looking at you, Rule Equivalency / Rule Replacement Questions!).

3) Work "Right-to-right." Yes, it's great to confirm that the right answer is right by confirming the other 4 answers are wrong. But, if you have a diagram that proves that B is correct, time spent checking C-E might be better spent elsewhere, particularly if you're pretty comfortable with that game type and you don't have a tendency to misinterpret the task of questions.

4) Are you taking The Big Pause? Some folks rush this because they don't want to lose time, but understanding the game more broadly, framing if possible, and ID'ing the rules and elements that are likely to drive the play of your game is time well spent because it will make the questions themselves faster and easier to answer.

5) Try re-doing individual games and full games sections. If it's material you've seen before, can you do it in time? Sometimes you need to practice at that speed with old material just to get a sense of what it feels like to move that fast before trying to tackle fresh material at that pace.

6) Are you trying to keep work in your head because you're afraid drawing it out will take too long? If so, stop it! It's almost always faster to draw it out, plus you can use that work to answer subsequent questions.

7) How's your scratch paper look? I like to build my master diagram in the upper left, my rules in the upper right, then build each hypothetical I draw for individual questions right under the master. That way I don't have to redraw the slots over and over.

Hope this helps. And good luck on test day!