Cube Counting question

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Illfavor

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I'm finishing up my PAT prep and Cube Counting is my worse section. I'm averaging 80/90 on Qvault and typically 3-4 of those are cube counting. I do the listing method (or w/e it's called) but I'm not really getting better at it 🙁 Any tips?

Anyways, this one is tricking me up.

http://imgur.com/GzAEfJv
 
Before you start counting and tallying, take 5 seconds or so to look at the cube structure as a whole to investigate the overlapped areas and get a better feel for what's hidden or what's touching other non consecutive cubes.

By not immediately consecutive cubes I'm taking about the 4-cube underneath that 5-sided cube that at first glance one might think it has only 3-sides painted. Other than that I'd just familiarize yourself with patterns to help you count faster, i.e. a "tower" would have 2 4-sided cubes and a 5-sided cube on top. If you can recognize this quickly then when you take your eyes off the monitor you can mark multiple cubes at a time rather than going one at a time.

Just keep practicing cube counting, because at least for me, during the actual exam, cube counting allowed me to play "catch up" with my pace/timing by completing it in ~8 minutes.

Thanks! I'm working on slowing down and it's actually helping a ton. I usually finish with ~15 minutes left, so I can afford to take a bit more time in the harder sections. Any idea what the answer (looking for 4-sided cubes) is? I'm trying to find 6 (answer key) but can only find 5!
 
Thanks! I'm working on slowing down and it's actually helping a ton. I usually finish with ~15 minutes left, so I can afford to take a bit more time in the harder sections. Any idea what the answer (looking for 4-sided cubes) is? I'm trying to find 6 (answer key) but can only find 5!

I also see 5. Weird.
 
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