When do you abandon a game / reading passage?

[Dani]

I have a decent handle so far on how to solve the games and work my way through a reading passage, but I consistently run out of time. I have yet to finish all four of either section in 35 minutes, but I haven't given up hope yet.

My question is this: I try to prioritize the four games / passages to start with the easiest and / or the ones with the most questions. But sometimes I'm a few minutes into the problem (or setting up the game and realizing after 2 questions that I'm missing some deductions and just can't "get it") before noticing that I picked a hard one and will spend a lot of time on it. Does it make sense to abandon at that point and skip to another one or do I keep working b/c I already invested the time?

Help!!! Thanks.

[Dave Killoran]

Hey Dani,

You ask a very good question, and one of the toughest ones to answer!

With Games, in your description of the problem it appears that you aren't comfortable yet assessing the difficulty of what you are looking at. I know from your answer to another post that you are taking the weekend course, and that should help you better identify difficulty in games from the outset (it will also help you diagram better, which will help you go faster overall and put less pressure on you as the section progresses).

With Reading Comprehension, difficulty can be harder to assess. For some people, topic actually is a high indicator of difficulty (for example, if someone doesn't like science, then a science passage can automatically be harder for them). However, if you can get past topic bias, I think that the style of language is one of the better indicators of difficulty. If I start reading a passage and the language is complex and convoluted from the start, that's a good sign that the passage will be tricky. the number of viewpoints and the similarity of viewpoints also plays a role in how hard a passage is, so always track those. In the weekend course they will be talking about these ideas, so after you are done there come and let me know how your perspective has changed.

To get to the last question you ask--when to leave a game/passage you've already started on--the answer is subjective. I tend to think that if you are still int he first minute or two of working on a game/passage, you can leave without much damage. After that, however, the price starts to rise significantly. That said, if you are working on something that truly makes no sense, you have to leave it and move on. Let's just hope that you realize that you are in such a situation in the first minute

Please let me know if that helps. Thanks!