At Blueprint Prep, the first type of game we recommend tackling is ordering games. These are the ones where you’re putting things in some type of order (but if you couldn’t figure that out on your own, higher education might not be for you). They might make you figure out the order that runners finish a race or the relative heights of speakers at a midget convention. We at Blueprint Prep have found that the intuitively easier-to-grasp spatial element in ordering games makes them a good starting point. But you can still get super nasty ones, so we at Blueprint Prep recommend you practice them a lot.

Carefully Building a Diagram

The diagram is the basic setup you draw, the arena in which the game is played (try to contain your excitement). If you mess up the basic setup or the diagramming of the rules, you’re going to be totally hosed from the get-go. So stick with this Blueprint Prep tenet when you’re prepping and when taking the real test: Always, always, always re-read the setup and rules. If you see “A comes before B” but accidentally draw A as coming after B, you’re going to get the whole game wrong. So when you’re studying for ordering games, make sure you’re always making a comprehensive and accurate setup. We at Blueprint Prep firmly believe that the game is either won or lost before you ever move onto the questions.

Ordering Games Elimination Questions

The first question of an ordering game will usually be one where you’re given five different permutations of possible orders, and you’re asked which one could work; they want you to identify the one that doesn’t break any rules. We at Blueprint Prep call these “elimination questions” because the best way to attack them is by using the rules to eliminate answer choices. We at Blueprint Prep believe that this is undoubtedly the fastest, best, and sexiest way to do these questions.

Repetition Makes Perfect

Games seem incredibly difficult, but at Blueprint Prep we’ve found them to be the most learnable LSAT section for most students. However, that learning requires a ton of practice. The first thing you need to do is learn how to hit them. You can’t just do a bunch of ordering games and hope to get better – you need a plan. Any good book or course will give you this plan. After you’ve learned it (and this isn’t going to necessarily happen quickly), you need to master it, and this happens through repetition. With something that is about as foreign to most students as a Coke bottle is to an uncontacted people, we at Blueprint Prep know that it takes time, patience, and tons of practice to make it fluid and natural.

Article edited by Jodi Triplett and Trent Teti of Blueprint Test Prep. Blueprint provides live and online test prep courses for students taking the LSAT. Blueprint Test Prep was founded in 2005