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August 8, 2016

Attacking Logic Games: Focus on Certainty!

I was reading my colleague Dave’s recent blog post on Global and Local question strategies in Logic Games, and it got me thinking about recent conversations I’ve had with students on similar topics, primarily with respect to efficient inference making and question attack. So I’m going to supplement his insights with a few of my own.

We focus a tremendous amount of time and attention in our courses and books emphasizing the fundamental importance of making correct inferences in Games: determining the various truths of the relationships between variable sets. In making inferences, what we’re really focused on is establishing notions of what I’ll refer to here as positive and negative certainty. That is, determining what must occur in an absolute (consistent) sense, and what cannot occur in an absolute sense. So we focus on establishing truths like “X must be selected 4th,” or “X cannot be in Group 3,” and we concern ourselves less with uncertainties, like “X could appear in any of the first five spots.” The reasoning behind this is really two-fold:

1. Most Games inherently contain a tremendous amount of uncertainty about the specific placement/arrangement/grouping of variables, and attempting to resolve all of that uncertainty or represent it in a meaningful way would simply take entirely too much time.

2. “Certainty” in terms of what is absolutely true or false (extreme limitations) is easier to identify and ultimately controls the Game to a much greater degree than the uncertainty.

What often gets overlooked in this discussion, however, is that the notion of certainty vs. uncertainty extends beyond just the setup, and into our examination of the questions and answer choices as well. When people encounter a Must Be True question in Games, it is generally pretty apparent that they must find the answer choice that represents a universal, consistent truth. In other words the correct answer choice is inherently certain. With that in mind, test takers should move aggressively through the options until an answer appears immediately, unavoidably correct (don’t waste time debating the merits of A; if A isn’t clearly correct move on to B, C, etc., confident that the correct answer, based on its consistent and absolute nature, will stand out from the others).

But what about a Could Be True question, where the correct answer choice is itself an uncertainty? Fortunately, in instances where the credited choice is not an absolute, the four incorrect options are absolute! Take that Could Be True situation and consider the four wrong answers: each one is incorrect because it CANNOT be true (it is absolutely impossible). And because certainty is almost always easier to identify and understand than uncertainty, it is often easier when faced with a question of that nature to examine the answers for why they are incorrect, instead of searching for the correct answer that contains variability, a harder idea to pin down. Other questions types—Could Be False, Not Necessarily True, Must Be True EXCEPT, Must Be False EXCEPT, etc.—also feature correct answers that are uncertain (and so four incorrect answers that are all absolutes) and are therefore often more appropriately attacked from a wrong-answer perspective.

So as you continue to practice with Games keep in mind that absolutes and certainty should be your primary (if not sole) focus, and that notion of attacking the absolutes extends even into the questions and answer choices. Devote more of your time and attention to the absolutes in Games and worry less about what cannot be determined with certainty; you’ll see an improvement in both speed and accuracy, from your initial inferences all the way through the questions.

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Posted by Jon Denning / Logic Games, LSAT Prep / Logic Games, LSAT Prep Leave a Comment

  • Beta Caesar
    August 08, 2013 at 1:24pm

    Dave Killoran’s article was really good. Likewise this article, which I consider an illumination of ideas discussed in Dave’s, speaks to precisely WHY focusing on local “If” questions first in the Games section did not work for me in the past! I tried that strategy the first time I took the LSAT (thanks to a useless Princeton Review course) and was embarrassed at just how much it did NOT help! The strategy Jon writes about makes far more sense. I see how things that are absolute or a certainty based on the constructs of the game can actually be used to help more quickly get to the right answer. I like this article a lot and think if I implement it as I practice getting faster in LG it will really give me a point boost! My issue with LG is not in that I can’t get to the right answer. I simply take too long getting there! Efficient use of time is the biggest challenge for me on the LSAT. Another fab PowerScore article!

  • Jon Denning
    August 08, 2013 at 10:24pm

    Thanks for the comment Beta – glad you’re finding value in these Games posts, and yeah, I agree that Dave makes some great points in his article! Time management and pacing seems to be nearly everyone’s biggest struggle, but just remember that speed is really a direct reflection of comprehension, so as you keep practicing work hard to improve your understanding of the various game types, PowerScore strategies, and ideas like those discussed in these posts and you should find you’re able to move much more quickly.

About Jon Denning

Jon Denning is PowerScore's Vice President and oversees product creation and instructor training for all of the exam services PowerScore offers. He is also a Senior Instructor with 99th percentile scores on the LSAT, GMAT, GRE, SAT, and ACT.

Jon is widely regarded as one of the world's foremost authorities on LSAT preparation, and for the past decade has assisted thousands of students in the law school admissions process. He has also created/co-created a number of PowerScore’s LSAT courses and publications, including the Reading Comprehension Bible, the In Person, Live Online, and On Demand LSAT Courses, the Advanced Logic Games Course, the Advanced Logical Reasoning Course, and a number of books in PowerScore’s popular LSAT Deconstructed Series.

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