Reference 18 · Route book · recce done in advance
Split Times
Exam day is a rally: a timed run through known terrain. You cannot win it on any single stage — but you can lose it in one ditch, by spending ninety seconds refusing to release a single multiple-choice option. Rally drivers pre-drive the route and write pace notes; this card is yours. The skill being tested on exam day is not speed. It is the refusal to spend time where it cannot buy points.
Section I55 questions · 60 minutes
Section II3 essays · 120 minutes
Tempo MCQ≈ 65 s per question
Tempo essay≈ 40 min per essay
Stage 1· the whole route at a glance
Where the minutes go
The digital exam is taken in the Bluebook app: a visible clock, a question navigator, and — the rule that changes strategy most — no returning after a section closes. Inside the multiple-choice section you can flag and revisit; once it submits, its stages are run. Plan the route before the clock starts:
Fig. 18.1 — The whole route. Two sections, one break, and a finish line that does not reopen.
Stage 2· pace notes for a passage set
Working the bends
A passage set is not eleven questions; it is one reading plus eleven short visits. The set that feels fastest is the one you read once, well. Pace notes:
Read once, at reading speedNot hunting answers — building the map: who speaks, where the pressure sits, where the passage turns. A defensive hunt-read takes three passes and still misses the turn.
Two questions, one revisitWhen two questions point at the same lines, answer both on one deliberate reread of that stretch. The revisit is the expensive move; never pay it twice.
The 65-second tempo60 minutes for 55 questions leaves about 65 seconds each, reading included. Ahead of tempo after a set? Bank it — do not spend it admiring the next poem.
The 90-second ruleNo single question gets more than about 90 seconds on first pass. Flag it, drive on, return with whatever the set has left. Flat-out over a blind crest is how rallies end.
Elimination is progressTwo answers gone is work done, not failure — the flag holds your place, and a later question often re-explains the lines that stumped you.
Answer everythingNo penalty for wrong answers. An untouched flagged question earns zero; a one-elimination-down guess is the cheapest point purchase available.
Stage 3· the clock decision, run live
Hold or release: a worked decision
The single most repeatable exam-day decision. Watch one run on an invented practice set:
Clock card · practice set 3 · question 41 · invented for this card
0:00–0:40
The question asks why the narrator of the invented passage recites the shopkeeper’s hours like a rosary
— devotion, compulsion, or sales pitch. You reread the cited paragraph; the rosary line now clearly carries devotion, and two options fall.
0:85
Two candidates remain, and the paragraph supports both readings. The 90-second rule fires: this bend is not worth the ditch. Decision made — flag, release, next question. The release is not a surrender; it is a scheduled return.
set end
Question 44 quotes the final line of the same passage — and its explanation of the narrator’s nightly ritual quietly settles what the rosary recitation was doing. You return to 41 with 40 seconds left, the new evidence in mind, and choose. Two minutes spent at once would have bought the same point for triple the price.
Service note
The clock decision has exactly three exits: answer (the evidence is in reach — spend the seconds), flag and release (90 seconds gone — the question still exists later), guess and go (set nearly over — an unanswered flagged question scores zero). Choosing the exit is a skill you can rehearse on any practice set, with a stopwatch, before exam day.
Stage 4· the points
How the six points are actually scored
Section II is scored on the official analytic dimensions — thesis, evidence and commentary, sophistication — and the scoring is independent per dimension and per essay. That independence is the most exploitable fact on exam day:
0–1ThesisA defensible claim that responds to the prompt — earnable in two sentences, in the first three minutes. It is never too late to repair a missing thesis; it is the cheapest point on the route.
0–4Evidence & commentaryThe long stage: quotations or recalled specifics, each with commentary that says what the evidence does. A plain thesis with loaded, seam-joined evidence outscores a brilliant thesis traveling alone — most available points live here.
0–1SophisticationComplexity that is demonstrated, not announced: a rival reading absorbed, a part-to-whole claim that survives the ending. Rare, and never required to score well — do not trade evidence minutes chasing it.
×3Per-essay independenceEach essay is scored on its own. A stage-one crash does not flatten the leg: the worst Q1 of your life is worth at most six points of a 120-minute section. Full tempo on Q2 and Q3 is the recovery.
Where the time goes, in points per minute: evidence and commentary pay the best wages on the exam — a cropped quotation with a function-verb sentence buys more, per minute, than any amount of thesis polishing or vocabulary. When the clock says choose, choose the paragraph that carries evidence.
Stage 5· essay tempo
The forty-minute stage, split
Three essays, roughly forty minutes each — and the split inside each stage matters as much as the total. The timing tower, learned once, runs on its own:
Fig. 18.2 — The per-essay timing tower. Same shape for Q1, Q2, and Q3; only the reading changes.
Stage 6· bluebook realities
The machine you will actually drive
Format facts that change behavior, and the behavior each should produce:
Visible countdownThe clock is on screen the whole run. Glance at split points — every passage set, every essay third — not every question; clock-watching per question costs more than it saves.
Flag for reviewInside Section I, flagged questions can be revisited until the section submits. The flag is the 90-second rule’s mechanical half — set it without ceremony, keep driving.
No return after submitWhen a section closes, it is run — including Section II. Never leave an essay stage early on a promise to yourself about the next one; there is no next lap.
Typing is steeringEssays are typed. Practice writing timed essays at a keyboard: quotation marks, the slash for line breaks, italics for titles. Fumbling the wheel costs minutes no map can repay.
The podium. The exam rewards a driver who knows the route better than the route knows itself: sixty minutes spent at tempo through the sets, three essays each given their twelve-and-twenty-three-and-five, every flag returned, every section submitted empty. The six points are scored by readers — but the split times were set by you.
Reference 18 · Split Times · the shopkeeper’s-hours question scenario, the clock card, and every sample sentence were written fresh for this card; exam timing stated as published in the current course and exam description; no other work is quoted.