Customer Reviews

McGraw-Hill's Conquering LSAT Logic Games

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1 star:		(29)

 

 

Maybe they don't want you to do well on the LSAT, because if you did, despite encountering this book, and you became a lawyer, you would want to sue McGraw-Hill.

Another well-intended LSAT prep offering, this book purports to use the strategies developed by Harvard Law in order to offer a "foolproof" method of solving LSAT logic games. Their method is foolproof, all right; the rate of typos, misprints and other errors contained in this book made the prep questions virtually useless to any but a complete fool. The poor editing makes me wonder if anyone at McGraw Hill, let alone HLS, has ever heard of red pen - and, as another reviewer suggested, casts a great deal of aspersion on both the legal and writing skills of Harvard students.

That being said, I actually found the book /in toto/ to be quite useful; I simply applied the strategies delineated therein to old disclosed LSATs. That approach worked quite well and yielded much better results than using any of the books by itself (or, for that matter, LSAC's own prep method).

Sadly, this execrable state of accuracy isn't limited to one or two bad books; every LSAT prep book I worked with, including entries from all the major prep companies, was plagued with the same rates and kinds of errors. (I'm already planning on requesting a refund from a particular name brand, as blindly following its "correct answers" would guarantee a poorer score than one would obtain with no prep at all.) One has to wonder if this is an industry-wide scheme to drive people away from the books and into classroom-based prep courses.

What the $%@! Are the people at McGraw-Hill trying to pull? How did this book get on the market? And just who wrote it... A deranged lunatic? A filthy sadist? A pack of dim-witted monkeys on acid?

The book is littered with errors. I started finding them almost from page one. Typos I could care less about, but the answers they give to the sample questions are frequently wrong. It's so bad that when one of my answers matches the answer in the book, I worry that I have done the question wrong.

My exam is coming up in a couple of weeks... I can still recover from this mistake, but I sure would like my time (and money) back from this catastrophic disaster.

McGraw-Hill should be absolutely ASHAMED of this product. This book had so many errors, it was laughable. By mid-book it was clear that I had to be on guard for incorrect answers (yes, plural) on pretty much every single answer key (though the vast majority were typos). If I hadn't investigated typo answer choices, I would have been led to believe that tests had been completed accurately when answers were in fact wrong, or inaccurately when answers were in fact correct. (The answer key frequently listed "B"s for "A"s; "C"s for "B"s; even "F"s instead of "E"s when there are only answer choices A through E!) A total waste of time and money.

Instead: Ace the LSAT-Logic Games (wonderful book)

The other reviews weren't joking when they said this book is full of errors. I just realized I wasted $20 on this book.

I bought this book hoping that it would help me increase my speed on the LSAT games. Though I am now able to complete the games in this book about twice as quickly as when I started, these games do not mirror the format of the games on the actual LSAT. I am continuing with it only because I take the LSAT in 3 days and don't have time to buy another book. Here are some of my biggest complaints:

-Many of the answer choices include "E) None of the Above", which is never an answer choice on the real LSAT. This forces you to use strategies that won't necessarily help you on the LSAT.

-Often there is more than one correct answer in the answer choices. For example, a question might ask "If Dana is second in line and Evan is third, which of the following is NOT possible?" One of the answer choices might be "Anna is second in line", which we already know is not true because the question itself stated that Dana was second in line. Yet apparently they are looking for a DIFFERENT correct answer from the answer choices.

-Some of the logic diagrams are incorrect (such as the one on the bottom right-hand corner of page 31-- the F and G are shifted too far to the right).

-I often find myself stuck selecting from two answer choices that I believe are both correct. When I check the "explanations," it will only say "We know from our diagram that answer B is possible. All other choices have contradictions". Uh... the whole reason I wanted an explanation is because I don't think there are contradictions for ALL of the other answers. The explanations might as well be "The answer is A because all the rest of them are not the answer."

In conclusion, just because you write "Harvard" on something doesn't mean it is worth anything.

This book is the biggest waste of money and time ever. I have only gotten through page 18, and already spotted 4 errors. The practice questions are not actual LSAT questions, are poorly written, and contain many errors. Hey McGraw Hill, curvebreakers, and editor Chris Keenum, many sarcastic 'thanks' to you all.

If you made the same mistake I did and bought this book, check out the following errors I came across:

Page 8- Their second example of a 'contrapositive' is completely wrong. Page 13- Question 5 has two correct answers. Page 16- Question 6 has two correct answers. Page 18- Question 2 has two correct answers (in the explanation, it even states that it could be Evan & Hillary, so either answer B or D is correct).

The 2nd Edition of this book still has typos. I compared mine with the new version and found they have fixed some, but many are still there.

Here is a list of mistakes I found from the 1st edition. There may be more, but making these edits should allow you to do the problems and have only one correct answer. I compared my list against the 2nd edition and used the 2nd edition correction where they made one.

ERRATA for 1st Edition:
Page 8: Second "2. Switch the signs of the variables" should read B->Not A
Page 8: Second Contrapositive should read "B->Not A"
Page 10: 3 (D) Light 7 is on.
Page 16: 1 (C) Dana, Ben, Evan, Chris
Page 16: 1 (D) Chris, Frank, Dana
Page 16: 6 (A) Evan is in the aquarium
Page 18: 2 (D) Evan and Anna are chosen.
Page 25: 6 (A) Anna and Hillary cannot be sent, as shown by diagram A
Page 31: In the diagram, D should be greater than C and G should be greater than H.
Page 37: 1 (B) Garry, Chris, Anna, Evan ,Iris, Hillary, Dana, Frank, Ben
Page 38: 5 (C) Chris and Frank are the only two people...
Page 52: 4 (A) Garry rows first and Chris rows fifth.
Page 62: 6 (B) This constraint...
Page 71: The number of Ben's table is two greater than the number of Dana's.
Page 72: 3 (E) None of these scenarios is possible.
Page 80: Question 4 answer is (E). References to (F) and (G) should be ignored.
Page 81: 2 (B) This occurs in scenario 2.
Page 86: 3 (E) This constraint...
Page 88: 4 (E) This temporary...
Page 91: 4 (E) Ben goes in a group with Dana.
Page 92: 4 (E) The only thing that you can determine from this configuration is that Chris must go in group 2. Ben is able to go in a group with Dana.
Page 96: 6 (A) Evan serves as a copilot on the flight to Rome.
Page 97: 4 (C) Dana cannot...
Page 98: 1 (B) Ben cannot...
Page 99: 4 (C) This constraint...
Page 105: 5 (E) 7
Page 106: 5 (C) Store 4 cannot...
Page 115: 2 (E) This can occur...
Page 115: 4 (D) Hillary and Iris...
Page 117: 2 (E) Each answer choice...
Page 121: 4 (A) Orange
Page 129: 5 (C) third, fourth, fifth
Page 133: 4 (B) "Sbiper" could not...
Page 133: 5 (C): "Radium" could occupy the third, fourth or fifth place in the sentence. Fourth: radio->radip->radipm->radium. "Radium" could not occupy the sixth place since all words cannot start with the same letter "R".
Page 134: 2 (B) The smallest...
Page 142: 3 (C) The north hanger is a single
Page 146: 4 (B) Monday, Thursday, Friday
Page 154: 1 (C) This order is possible in the second scenario above.
Page 155: The Initial Setup diagram should read 1. D B A/C G E F C/A and 3. A/C B C/A D/G E F G/D
Page 158: 4 (B) Chris must meet with Tara the same day as Anna on one day, but on another day he could meet with her the same day as Ben and not consecutively. Anna and Chris could meet with Tara on Wednesday if Ben meets with her on Monday, Thursday and Friday. Chris could meet with Tara on Monday or Thursday since Ben meets with her on - but not the day before - those days.
Page 162: Second row of second diagram should read H/J F J/H I G
Page 170: 9. If D goes in slot 5, then which of the following could be true?
Page 170: 9 (E) G goes in a higher -numbered slot than D.
Page 171: 17. If Bike U is paired with rider D, then which of the following must be false?
Page 171: 17 (A) Rider B is in room 4
Page 171: 19. If Rider D is not paired with bike U, then each of the following could be false except
Page 172: 20 (D) H and D
Page 173: 3. D
Page 173: 5. A
Page 173: 9. A
Page 173: 17. A
Page 173: 19. B
Page 174: 5. Correct Answer (A)
Page 174: 9. Correct Answer (A)
Page 174: 13. Correct Answer (D). This occurs in scenario 3.b. We can see that E must be fourth, not fifth.
Page 175: 17. Correct Answer (A). If Bike U is paired with Rider D, then U cannot go in room 3. Putting it there would force D into room 1, which would separate it from U. Thus, there are two possible ways to place D and U together.
D A B C B/C A C/B D
U T R/S S/R R/S T S/R U
Page 175: 19. Correct Answer (B). If Rider D is not paired with Bike U, it must be paired with R since it cannot be paired with T or S. This means C must be paired with S since C cannot go with U. This leaves B to be paired with U.
Page 184: 26 (B) B, C
Page 187: 26. Correct Answer (B). Neither D nor H could sit in boat two. F cannot be in the same boat with H. If D is in boat two then A also has to be in boat 2. Either B or C would have to be in boat 2. So, A cannot be in boat 2.

ORIGINAL REVIEW:

There seem to be 2 flavors of LSAT logic games prep books. Those with lots of problems, but are short of tutorial guidance to solve the different types of problems and those that contain maybe a dozen problems, but are very deep in their discussion on how to attack the problems. This book is more of the first variety.

The 72 logic games presented in this book are not real LSAT problems but are made up by Curvebreakers. Seeing as how there are many other sources for official questions, I think this is fine. So I viewed the book more as a source of additional practice, and for this purpose, the book is mostly acceptable. Yes, there are some typos and errors early on but I worked through them and completed the book anyway.

I went to the curvebreakers website and tried to find an errata sheet, but came up empty-handed.

I didn't really find much by way of methodology except for the formal logic and sequencing games. I found those sections to be reasonably helpful, even if I felt they could have gone more in-depth about how to parse english sentences into sufficent-necessary conditions. For example, how to treat words like "unless", "without", etc.

This book does provide a methodology for doing games of selection that outperforms the techniques given in other books. These are games where the rules are of the form "If X is selected, Y is not selected", etc. I found this section to give far superior advice to that given in other books.

So, if you are looking for a book with lots of games to supplement those official LSAT logic games that you have already burned through, go ahead and get this book. It won't hurt. But if you are just starting and in need of a good tutorial book on how to attack the section as a whole, I would suggest the Powerscore book instead as a starting point.

I can honestly tell you that I spent more time trying to figure out what answer they MEANT to write than working through the problems. I would be mortified to have my name listed as the editor on this book. I don't typically review books, but in this case I was so fired up about my wasted time that I actually wrote a letter to the publisher expressing my dismay. The number of typos was, quite frankly, inexcusable. Some of them could have been caught by running spell check (for example, spelling the word first "frst"). My personal favorite was when the book would list the answer as F, when the choices were only A-E, and you were supposed to figure that out. It seems odd to me that in a book designed to instruct the best logical approaches, the most difficult logic questions were in deciphering the answers.
Giant waste of time. Definitely go with the Kaplan books, your blood pressure will thank you.

Wow! Is this the quality of work the "Harvard Law students who got top scores" produce? Makes me question the true value of that $90,000 Ivy League law school education. An entry level office assistant wouldn't last a week on the job with this kind of carelessness. And these errors are not trivial... I wasted a lot of valuable time before I realized this sloppy work was the rule, and not just a few exceptions. Shame on you "experts"!!!