JFT-Basic has no negative marking. A wrong answer and an unanswered question score exactly the same: nothing.
That single fact has two consequences, and the second is worth more than the first.
One: never leave a question blank
Obvious, and still it happens - usually because a candidate intends to come back and then runs out of time.
Every question has three options on screen. A blind guess is therefore worth roughly a third of a mark on average. An empty answer is worth zero, always. Answer everything, even in the last thirty seconds.
If the clock is nearly gone and you have four unanswered questions, do not read them. Choose something for each. That is not defeatism; it is arithmetic.
Two: stop thinking sooner than feels comfortable
This is the consequence people miss.
The cost of a hard question is not the mark you might lose on it. It is the time it takes from questions you could have answered. A candidate who spends three minutes on one vocabulary item has not risked one point - they have risked the two or three reading questions they will now rush at the end, where the passages are.
So set a limit in advance. Roughly a minute for a vocabulary or expression question, a little more for a reading item. When you hit it: choose the least-wrong option and move on. Details of the budget in time management.
How to guess better than chance
A blind guess wins a third of the time. An informed one does much better, and the eliminations are learnable.
Script and Vocabulary. Distractors are usually built from a shared kanji component, a similar shape, or a similar sound. If one option shares a component with the word in the question and the others do not, it is often the trap rather than the answer - but if you recognise one option as a real word you have met and the others look unfamiliar, take it.
Conversation and Expression. All options are usually grammatical; only one fits the situation. Ask two questions: who is speaking to whom, and which direction is the action going - am I offering or being offered, apologising or thanking? Politeness level eliminates fast. The section in detail.
Listening. If you caught the topic but not the detail, eliminate options containing numbers or times you definitely did not hear. Beware the number that was said but answered a different question - that distractor appears constantly.
Reading. The answer is in the text. Options that are true-sounding but not stated are the standard trap. If an option contains a detail you cannot point to in the passage, it is usually wrong.
Do not overthink patterns
There is no pattern in the position of correct answers. “It has been option 2 three times, so this one is 3” is superstition and it costs points.
Practise the habit, not just the knowledge
Guessing well under a clock is a skill, and it only develops when there is a real clock. Sit a full mock: our free exam demo runs 48 questions on one 60-minute clock with no pausing, which is where you find out whether your one-minute limit is real or theoretical.
Then, when you review it, count the guesses that landed as errors. A lucky guess is a gap that has not been found yet.