I just joined the forum and I have a few questions

[BruceJ295]

Maybe I should start by explaining what I am trying to do. I am a 68 year old retired engineer and live in Asheville NC, the home of the UNCA Bulldogs. For the last few years my wife and I have been working with some of the UNCA students to help them with their post graduate plans. Recently, we have been working with some students who want to go to law school and obviously they want to do as well as they can on the LSAT. I have been given the task of trying to get them up to speed, as well as I can, with the logic game section.

Based upon the information that I saw in this web site I have ordered your Logic Games Strategy Guide and it should arrive in a few days. If the book is as good as I know it will be I am going to recommend that each of the students that we are working with also order the book.

So, here are some questions.

I currently have the prep test numbers 52 - 71, giving me a total of 80 games. I also see that you have a set of 40 games on this web site. Is this a large enough sample size or should I look to get additional games? If I need more games, are the games in the test preps numbered in the teens and 20s still relevant?

Are discussions of the games in the 52 - 71 range still OK or is most of the focus now on the newer games?

Thanks and I look forward to reading your book and participating in the forum.

[ohthatpatrick]

Ahhh, Asheville ... my favorite liberal hippie bastion of Appalachia.

Great questions:
20 tests plus 40 more games from our website is pretty adequate. It will force you to make your students replay the same games multiple times (which is highly invaluable in terms of getting better at games).

At a certain point you might end up wishing that you had some brand new complete Games sections, so that during the final month of tuning up for the LSAT, your students have multiple opportunities to try a fresh, modern Games section using all of their now finely honed skills.

In that sense, it's probably wise to set aside 4 or 5 tests from the outset that are "off limits", so that you can use them later to mimic the feel of taking a new test.

There's not much difference between games from PT72 - 82 and those from PT62-72.

There IS a good bit of different between modern games and those in the PT20's, but the older tests are still great fodder for practice material.

Modern tests seem to give us two different sorts of Games sections (luck of the draw, depending on when you take the test):

TYPE 1: all four games are pretty recognizable standard 'types', but the questions are very difficult and often involve a lot of brute force plug-n-chug.

TYPE 2: two (or even three) of the games are total pushovers. We might be able to do one of them in 4-5 mins! But then you arrive with 15 mins for the final game and are like, "WTF is this?"

When you do tests from back in the day, it's more common to see nonstandard game types. Practicing these snowflakes is useful primarily for rehearsing the feeling of, 'I can make ANYTHING work'. It's less useful in terms of honing your skills/speed at the most common forms of modern games.

Games basically come in these four main categories:
Ordering, Grouping, some mish-mosh of Ordering/Grouping, and Other

Any game that involves Ordering or Grouping is definitely useful in terms of refining the most typically used skills.

Any game that's more of an Other is primarily useful for practicing "thinking on our feet / adapting".

In terms of discussing older games, have at it! You are always welcome to re-open a cold case. The way this forum works is that the moderators respond to all questions from green/blue student names and we respond to yellow students when it's a brand new question. Follow up questions from yellow students don't usually get answered by moderators, but a lot of smart students patrol these grounds and will often offer yellow students the help they desire.

Good luck!

[BruceJ295]

Wow, thanks for the detailed response to my post.

It looks like you have been to Asheville and know about the aging hippies. Do you also know about the beer?

Now back to more relevant topics. Because I was able to get a good price on Amazon, I have 30 additional tests, all numbered less than 40, that are in the mail.

I am not ashamed to admit that the LG puzzles have been taking me more than 35 minutes PER puzzle to figure out. Even then, I'm only getting about half the answers right. I have to think that when I show this to some of our kids it is going to be like giving them a slap up side the head.

My copy of your book on solving these puzzles is now at the USPS distribution center in Pittsburgh. I am confident that the book will teach me how to do a much more structured analysis of the puzzles.

I can't see your original response right now. Can you explain the different color codes that you mentioned?

My wife is much better equipped to do the reading comprehension than I am. I already have your book on LR and I'm sure that some of you buddies on that side of the fence will be hearing from me.

In the short term, I will certainly be a taker from this forum. However, it is my goal to eventual become a contributor.

[ohthatpatrick]

"I can't see your original response right now. Can you explain the different color codes that you mentioned?"

Not sure what you meant by this?

[BruceJ295]

From your original response.

"In terms of discussing older games, have at it! You are always welcome to re-open a cold case. The way this forum works is that the moderators respond to all questions from green/blue student names and we respond to yellow students when it's a brand new question. Follow up questions from yellow students don't usually get answered by moderators, but a lot of smart students patrol these grounds and will often offer yellow students the help they desire."

I am asking about the green, blue, and yellow students.

Thanks

[ohthatpatrick]

Ohhhh, right.

RED NAMES = Manhattan Prep teachers
BLUE NAMES = ppl enrolled in an MPrep course
GREEN NAMES = ppl who've bought an MPrep book (and set up some sort of online access, apparently)
ORANGE NAMES = ppl who just signed up for the forum online

I was just warning you that moderators usually aren't going to answer ORANGE posts. When you get your books, look inside for some code to unlock online access to stuff, because I'm guessing that doing so will turn you into a green student (you're moving up in the world!)

[BruceJ295]

Very good.

Thanks

[MyPaperE12]

I also have such a problem. Thanks