New Approach for LG on Feb Test? Forum

[mdelacruz]

LG is consistently my best section (as is the case for a lot of other folks as well). Typically I go -0/-1 on games, but rarely will go -3 or -4 usually because I run out of time or make a careless mistake or two.

I trained with the PS LG Bible, and got into the habit of basically brute forcing my way through the games. For example on MBT questions I'm usually just plugging in answers and seeing which one can't be falsified, etc. Again, generally this works but occasionally it comes back to bite me when I run into problems with poor time management. Unfortunately, this is exactly what happened on the Dec. exam when I went -4 on section 5.

My question is simple: How to remedy this for Feb? Should I just drill consistently focusing on time management? Or is it too late to look into Manhattan's LG book or others? Any advice is much appreciated!

[AJordan]

How into "worlds" have you gotten? I went from a similar point in ability to consistently -0 when I learned to recognize rules that triggered me into building worlds. It's all kind of individually holistic at that level but two good baseline rules I recommend to folks in your position are:

1. restrictive rules trigger worlds
2. the goal is fewer worlds than questions for the game. 4 or fewer is ideal.

Oftentimes you'll find yourself sketching out 4 worlds and realizing that one doesn't even work, one only has one hard solution, etc. These get to be real time savers once you achieve some level of proficiency.

edit: some games you will just have to brute force anyway so don't give up on that skill. It's an essential fallback. This just gives you another bullet in the chamber so to speak.

[tanes25]

Try 7 Sage. Go to their website or YouTube. They have video explanations for every game and they’re all free. Just search this site or others for reviews.

[Mikey]

7sage youtube videos!

also, 7sage advocates for 'splitting all possible worlds upfront' and although this works very well for lots of people, I found my own approach to work much better and it saves time and gets me points. I usually only split game boards when I have the feeling that rules are like, VERY restrictive, but if I don't get the feeling then I just do my own thing.. idk, you can try their approach which is good or you can do what consistently got me -0 or -1:

1. write all rules down, obviously
2. do all of the questions that gives you an additional premise (usually 'If ___' questions)
3. save all of the could be true, must be true, etc. questions for last
4. do the MBT, CBT, etc. questions at the end once you have game boards drawn out for all of the IF questions. this usually lets u eliminate some answer choices by just looking back at them and only makes you try maybe 2 or 3 of the AC's instead of all of them, and if you're lucky maybe you are only left with 1 AC.

idk this works for me and I always finish on time, but it may take a few practice sections to get used to I guess if you're coming from a whole diff approach, idunno.

btw the best piece of advice I can give you about timing on LG is to MOVE ON once you find an AC that works. you have to trust that you did everything right and just move the hell on or else you'll be wasting time.

[mdelacruz]

7sage youtube videos!

also, 7sage advocates for 'splitting all possible worlds upfront' and although this works very well for lots of people, I found my own approach to work much better and it saves time and gets me points. I usually only split game boards when I have the feeling that rules are like, VERY restrictive, but if I don't get the feeling then I just do my own thing.. idk, you can try their approach which is good or you can do what consistently got me -0 or -1:

1. write all rules down, obviously
2. do all of the questions that gives you an additional premise (usually 'If ___' questions)
3. save all of the could be true, must be true, etc. questions for last
4. do the MBT, CBT, etc. questions at the end once you have game boards drawn out for all of the IF questions. this usually lets u eliminate some answer choices by just looking back at them and only makes you try maybe 2 or 3 of the AC's instead of all of them, and if you're lucky maybe you are only left with 1 AC.

idk this works for me and I always finish on time, but it may take a few practice sections to get used to I guess if you're coming from a whole diff approach, idunno.

btw the best piece of advice I can give you about timing on LG is to MOVE ON once you find an AC that works. you have to trust that you did everything right and just move the hell on or else you'll be wasting time.

Thanks. Yeah, I've looked at 7Sage videos occasionally for games that I've had trouble on. No doubt they are tremendously helpful. But do they teach a fundamentally different method of attacking games?

[Mikey]

Thanks. Yeah, I've looked at 7Sage videos occasionally for games that I've had trouble on. No doubt they are tremendously helpful. But do they teach a fundamentally different method of attacking games?

I would say 7sage is just different in that they really encourage making game boards before going into the questions. Idk if other prep companies do that, as I only watched 7sage vids to learn LG. that's pretty much it though, I think. The way they show you how to diagram rules as well is pretty simple to get used to, so that's good. Idk though, you're already going -0/-1 so idk if you should change your entire method of what you're doing, maybe just take certain things and adjust what you're doing (e.g. doing all of the IF questions first then others last, which is basically brute forcing like what you are doing but in a more efficient way).

[mdelacruz]

Thanks. Yeah, I've looked at 7Sage videos occasionally for games that I've had trouble on. No doubt they are tremendously helpful. But do they teach a fundamentally different method of attacking games?

I would say 7sage is just different in that they really encourage making game boards before going into the questions. Idk if other prep companies do that, as I only watched 7sage vids to learn LG. that's pretty much it though, I think. The way they show you how to diagram rules as well is pretty simple to get used to, so that's good. Idk though, you're already going -0/-1 so idk if you should change your entire method of what you're doing, maybe just take certain things and adjust what you're doing (e.g. doing all of the IF questions first then others last, which is basically brute forcing like what you are doing but in a more efficient way).

Yea, that makes sense. What sucks the most is that it was a purely a time management issue in December. I had no problem with actually setting up games 3 or 4 or answering the questions. In game 3 the order of the variables didn't matter, it was just applying the conditional rules. Game 4 (apartment floor game) was just a multi-tiered linear game.

I picked up the Powerscore LG by type books 1 & 2 and they were really helpful. I just drilled game types hard and did timed sections. For Feb, my instinctive reaction is basically to just do the same, but at the same time I feel like that's doing the same thing yet again and just expecting different results. I'm gonna try incorporating 7sage more into my prep and see what comes of it. Obviously I wanna always be doing sections under timed conditions, but also just see how I react to the slight adjustment in strategy.