KAPLAN LSAT PREP
LSAT
RELEASED TEST XV
EXPLAINED
A Guide to the June, 1995 LSAT
KAPLAN
The answer to the test question.
1995 Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center Ltd
All rights reserved. No part of this book may be reproduced in any form, by
photostat, microfilm, xerography or any other means, or incorporated into any
information retrieval system, electronic or mechanical, without the written permission
of Stanley H. Kaplan Educational Center Ltd.
SECTION I:
READING COMPREHENSION
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
PASSAGE 1—What Happened to the Dinosaurs?
(Q. 1-7)
Topic and Scope: Dinosaur extinction; specifically, various different contemporary
theories for dinosaurs’ disappearance.
Purpose and Main Idea: The author spends most of the time explaining and touting the
newest of three theories (the “volcanic-eruption theory”) as to why the dinosaurs died out.
Two earlier theories are described as well, but the author seems to have the most
confidence in this new one.
Paragraph Structure: Each of the first three paragraphs is devoted to a thumbnail
description of a theory: the “climatic theory” (¶1) that held sway until the 1980s; the
“meteorite-impact theory” (¶2) popular in the ‘80s; and the “volcanic-eruption theory” (¶s
3-4), which is supported by newly-discovered evidence in India. The introductory
keyword “Moreover” leads us to expect more information about the new theory, and that’s
just what we get: We learn that the evidence for the other two theories (the change in sea
level and the iridium deposits) supports, or at least is consistent with, the eruption theory
as well.
The Big Picture:
• Sometimes the LSAT writers throw you a real curve when a Reading Comp. section
begins—a really complex passage, or one that’s way beyond most everyone’s ken.
Happily for the June, 1995 test takers, that wasn’t the case here. The passage’s
structure is as straightforward as can be, what with the theories and keyword
“Moreover” clearly signaling the key shifts; and thanks to Jurassic Park, this is
hardly a topic that most would find either unfamiliar or scary. On your LSAT, the
testmakers may not be so obliging. Just remember: At least one of those passages
will be of “low difficulty,” like this one, meaning that most people are expected to do
well on it. Find it, and attack it early in the section, even if it’s not printed first.
• Actually, the only examinees who screwed up were those who saw that the topic was
science and, knee-jerk, hightailed it to another passage. A word to the wise: Even
science passages can be manageable.
• Whenever the author describes several different points of view, take care to ascertain
her views on them: Which, if any, does she especially favor? Here, it’s not too tough
to detect the author’s enthusiasm for the volcano theory, but other passages may be
more challenging in this regard.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
The Questions:
1. (C)
This choice is a nice paraphrase of information in ¶2, which describes the nuts and bolts of
the “meteorite-impact theory.”
(A) Au contraire. Lines 5-9 demonstrate that the “climactic theory”—a theory that preceded
the “meteorite-impact theory”—could account for the extinction of ocean species at the
end of the Cretaceous era.
(B) refers to the details of the “volcanic-eruption theory,” a new theory intended to take the
place of the older “meteorite-impact theory” of the 1980s.
(D) Au contraire aussi. ¶1 says that researchers initially thought that the drop in sea level
thought to be behind the mass extinction episode at the end of the Cretaceous era was the
result of “noncatastrophic geological processes.”
(E) mistakenly attributes an element of the “volcanic-eruption theory” to the “meteoriteimpact theory.”
• When a passage discusses several different theories or scenarios, be sure that you’re
clear about the details of each—the questions will certainly test to see that you are.
2. (A)
The depths of the Earth’s mantle are described in two places, line 28 and line 40, and we
hope you kept reading past the first reference because the right answer is yielded by the
second. Lines 40-41 are choice (A) almost word-for-word.
(B) Only the element iridium is described here, and in fact that’s an element that is present
in the mantle but rare on the Earth’s surface. (B) gets it all cockeyed.
(C) According to lines 27-28, the mantle is rather unstable, and we get no information as to
whether things are more stable closer to the surface.
(D) The only reference to CO2 comes in line 24, before the mantle is even mentioned, and
all we’re told is that it’s released with lava. Yes, the lava eruption is triggered by mantle
instability, but that’s a long way from what (D) is saying.
(E) As with (C), we’re given no comparison between the mantle and the upper regions.
And, anyhow, the mantle (when heated by the core) becomes less dense in places, not
“uniformly” so.
• Use key nouns in question stems to help locate answers. Simply skimming for the
word “mantle” helps you figure out the only places where the right answer can be
found. However, be careful...
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
• ...because the first reference you find may not be the only or right one. Whenever
you think you’ve located an answer, keep reading and searching a bit longer, to be
on the safe side. Here, if you give up when you see line 28, you may become tempted
by distortions in choices (B) and (E). But if you check further and light on line 40,
your extra care pays off.
3. (D)
Lines 39-43 say that the Earth’s mantle is rich in iridium, while its surface doesn’t have
much of the stuff. Hence, we can infer that Cretaceous era lava (lava is just heated rock
from the Earth’s interior) “was richer in iridium” than surface rock.
(A) is beyond the scope of the passage, which never compares Cretaceous era lava with
meteorites in terms of their respective carbon dioxide content.
(B) Au contraire. Lines 29-32 indicate that lava is no more dense than—and may well be less
dense than—the molten rock just above the Earth’s core.
(C) According to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” the Earth’s climate was changed by
massive volcanic eruptions, not by the release of iridium hexaflouride, which was simply a
byproduct of those eruptions.
(E) The “volcanic-eruption theory” states that Cretaceous era lava distributed iridium
more evenly on the Earth’s surface than meteorite impacts could have; it doesn’t, however,
claim that the lava was richer in iridium than meteorites.
• Don’t be taken in by choices like (A), (B), (C) and (E) here, which seem plausible on a
first read through, but which actually distort the content of the text.
4. (A)
What could be more of a slam dunk? If you pre-phrased an answer after reading the
passage but before reading the choices, it’s possible that you came up with (A) almost
word-for-word.
(B), (C) “Attacking”? “Inadequacies”? The author isn’t critical of any of the theories. She’s
just reporting on which theories have held sway when. And (B)’s implication that more
than one theory was popular before the 1980s is just inaccurate, as line 10 makes clear.
(D) implies that the topic and scope of the passage focus on general principles of scientific
inquiry, and the relationship between evidence and theories. But no “general assertion” is
made; this passage is, as noted above, a straightforward examination of dinosaur extinction
theories, based largely on chronology.
(E) is a mess. No “skepticism” is confirmed, and the “view held prior to the 1980s” is but
one of the three theories explained, not the highlight of the passage.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
• Many Reading Comp. questions are pretty easy, and many Reading Comp. wrong
answers are pretty lame. Case in point. Even if you’re struggling with this section in
general, there will be questions that you can handle without much strain.
5. (D)
This choice is an excellent paraphrase of the information contained in lines 42-47.
(A) is beyond the scope of the passage, which only discusses possible developments at the
end of the Cretaceous era.
(B) According to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” the increase in atmospheric iridium and
the drop in sea level were both caused by volcanic activity; there was no direct connection
between the drop in sea level and the rise in atmospheric iridium levels.
(C) Again, the extinction of ocean species at the end of the Cretaceous era, according to the
volcanic theory, was due to volcanic activity, not to rising levels of iridium in the
atmosphere.
(E) The “volcanic-eruption theory” never claims that iridium is released into the
atmosphere through “normal geological processes.” This last phrase is associated with the
“climactic theory” discussed in ¶1.
• If a question stem points you to a particular set of lines or a particular paragraph, go
back and reread the relevant text before endorsing any of the choices. Otherwise you
might fall for a choice that’s wrong for a very subtle reason—a reason that you might
have missed on an initial reading of the passage.
6. (B)
Lines 54-57 say that, according to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” the gradual fall in sea
level was the result of the upward movement of diapirs toward the Earth’s surface.
(A) Lines 26-34 demonstrate that this theory makes assumptions about the temperature of
molten rock just above the Earth’s core.
(C) is beyond the scope of the text, which doesn’t discuss episodes of mass extinction
before the one at the end of the Cretaceous era.
(D) While the “volcanic-eruption theory” explains the distribution of iridium on the
Earth’s surface, it doesn’t try to explain either the relative scarcity of this element on the
Earth’s surface or its relative abundance in meteorites.
(E) According to the “volcanic-eruption theory,” iridium should be distributed relatively
evenly in this layer of clay.
• When most of the questions in a set focus on one theory or issue or scenario, use the
knowledge that you’ve acquired in answering the easier questions to help you with
the tougher ones.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
7. (B)
The “volcanic-eruption theory” claims that volcanic activity caused the climactic changes
that resulted in the mass extinction that occurred at the end of the Cretaceous era. If similar
volcanic activity had occurred at other times, but had not resulted in climactic changes,
then we’d have to think twice about whether this theory is in fact on the right track.
(A) The “volcanic-eruption theory” claims that iridium hexaflouride comes from the
Earth’s interior. Hence, the theory wouldn’t be called into question if meteorites were
found to have only minor quantities of the stuff. If anything, this evidence would tend to
strengthen the theory.
(C) The existence of other episodes of mass extinction would have no bearing on the
“volcanic-eruption theory,” which (so far as we know, anyway) concerns only the mass
extinction at the end of the Cretaceous era.
(D) The “volcanic-eruption theory” doesn’t deny that meteorites hit the Earth at the end of
the Cretaceous era; it simply claims that, however frequent these impacts may have been,
they can’t account for the physical evidence associated with the mass extinction at the end
of this era.
(E) If marine species are in fact more vulnerable to sudden changes in sea level than to
gradual changes, this fact would in no way undermine the notion that they could’ve
succumbed to a gradual change at the end of the Cretaceous era, as the “volcanic-eruption
theory” suggests.
• In Strengthen/Weaken questions, be sure that you’re clear about whether you’re
being asked to find the choice that strengthens or weakens the theory, scenario, etc.
Why? Because you can be sure that if you’re asked, say, to find the choice that
strengthens the theory or scenario, there’ll be wrong choices that weaken it, and viceversa.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
PASSAGE 2—Women and Folklore
(Q. 8-15)
Topic and Scope: Folklore studies; specifically, a recent shift in interest to women
folklorists.
Purpose and Main Idea: The author sets out to provide evidence as to the increased
interest in women folklorists. While the passage begins with a description of another shift—
to “the folk” (performers) and away from just “the lore” (stories)—notice that the author
never gets back to that until ¶4. The bulk of his interest is women performers.
Paragraph Structure: ¶1 lays out the topic, scope, and shifts described above, and ¶2
provides specifics as to the shift to interest in women: a specific element of what’s been true
in folklore “until recently” (compare line 2 to line 13), and a specific example of how things
are different.
¶3 first takes us back a century—to show that this interest in women folklorists isn’t unique
to the present day—and then highlights the content, pros, and cons of two contemporary
studies of two women folklorists. ¶4’s focus is defined by lines 52-53—brief speculation as
to the potential “result[s] of this line of study”—both the increased emphasis on women
and the interest in “the folk” rather than just “the lore.”
The Big Picture:
• Early on you should listen keenly for keywords that hint at overall structure. Here,
for instance, “It has become...a truism...until recently” clearly tells you that, in the
author’s mind, that truism no longer holds. Figure out the truism and you have the
author’s p.o.v. in the bag!
• You must listen for, recognize, and interpret keywords throughout your reading, of
course, not just at the beginning.
• Many students reported some initial confusion as to what “the lore was often more
studied than the folk” meant. LSAT authors will often toss in a figure of speech like
this—simply to see whether it throws you! Of course, the author immediately adds
“That is,” (line 3)—indicating that the phrase is about to be redefined. (And, of
course, this is all something of a curve, because the author spends more time on the
role of women than on the folk vs. lore stuff anyhow.)
• Always remember: If a difficult phrase or concept is important enough, the author
will define it more clearly for you before too long. (And if it’s not important, who
cares what it means?)
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
The Questions:
8. (E)
This choice nicely captures the author’s topic, scope, and purpose.
(A) According to lines 7-9, folk performers, as opposed to just their works, began to get
attention from the early 1970s. The increased emphasis on women, the text implies, is an
even more recent phenomenon. Besides, the precise date when scholars first began to give
attention to the contributions of women folklorists is a mere detail.
(B) nicely sums up the gist of ¶4, but certainly doesn’t qualify as the passage’s main point.
(C) Lines 38-48 indicate that recent works about women folklorists don’t focus primarily
on the “the problems of repertoire analysis.”
(D) The text claims that folklore studies have shifted from an almost exclusive emphasis on
folklore itself to an interest in the people who transmit it. (D) makes a quite different claim.
• In global questions, you’ve got to look for the choice that comes to grips with the
entire passage. Steer clear of choices that focus on individual details or ¶s.
9. (E)
¶2’s purpose, as noted above, is to provide examples of the new trend toward focusing on
women in folklore studies, and the author asserts that The Dynamics of Folklore is a “telling”
example—“perhaps more telling,” even, than several recent studies in which women are
central.
(A) What’s “too soon to tell” is the extent of the shift (line 18-20), but the author has no such
reservations as to whether women are coming to the forefront.
(B) Weigle & Farrer are looking backwards to traditional folklore collection, and The
Dynamics is an example of the new trend, so the latter couldn’t possibly be there to “refute”
the former. In any case, lines 18-21 act as a transitional sentence clearly separating the two
details.
(C) Wrong ¶. Repertoire analysis doesn’t show up until ¶3.
(D) may be highly tempting to less than careful readers, but ¶2 is solely about the new
interest in women folklorists. It sidesteps the “performer vs. material” distinction that’s
raised in ¶s 1 and 4 and highlighted in (D).
• As you read, your favorite keywords should be Emphasis Keywords (like “Perhaps
more telling”), because they will always help you to differentiate what truly matters
to the author from the factual and the tangential.
• As often as not, a “purpose of a reference” question like this one is a “purpose of the
paragraph” question. Remember what the paragraph in question is there for, and
you can usually get a quick point.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
10. (C)
The folklorists mentioned in the last ¶ are concerned with studying folklore in its larger
cultural “context,” and in understanding the different ends to which it is put by men and
women. The book in (C) reflects these two interests.
(A) overlooks the male/female distinction made by current folklore researchers.
(B) gets the male/female distinction right, but misses the cultural emphasis of current
scholarship.
(D) reflects the historical emphasis on the substance of folklore itself to the exclusion of
those who transmit it.
(E) distorts a detail from the wrong ¶—¶1.
• In choices that ask you to go outside of the passage itself, look for the choice that is
analogous to or parallels the relevant information in the passage.
11. (B)
This choice captures the essence of lines 7-10.
(A) Folklore research has recently been concentrating on the differences, not the similarities,
in the ways that men and women use folklore.
(C) This choice distorts a detail from the wrong ¶—¶3.
(D) Au contraire. Folklore research has increasingly sought to place folklore in its proper
cultural context.
(E) Since the early 1970s, there has been an increasing scholarly interest in individuals who
transmit folklore.
• Note how you could have used the date (the 1970s) in the question stem to zero in on
lines 7-10, where the answer to this question is to be found. In general, use whatever
information the question stem gives you to focus your search for the correct answer.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
12. (A)
Early folklorists, remember, concentrated on the folklore itself, and not on the people who
transmitted the stuff. Why? Because these folklorists felt that the performers were not
creative people who contributed to the material itself.
(B) is beyond the scope of the passage, which discusses scholarship about performers of
folklore, not the views of the performers themselves.
(C) is also beyond the scope of the passage, which, again, focuses on scholarship about folk
performers. There’s no real discussion about folklore itself, let alone whether it underwent
change from generation to generation.
(D) distorts the gist of lines 13-18, which state that early folklorists tended to downplay the
contributions of women performers. That’s quite different from saying that early folklorists
thought that women didn’t have much of a role in transmitting folklore.
(E) The male/female distinction regarding the meaning of a piece of folklore was not one
made by early folklorists. This is a distinction made by contemporary scholars.
• The correct answer to any inference question will always stick very close to the spirit
of the text. If you have to work very hard to endorse a choice, it’s probably wrong.
13. (A)
Before the early 1970s, folklorists studied folklore but paid no attention to the people who
were involved in transmitting it. Likewise, the anthropologist in (A) studies “implements”
(i.e., tools) but pays no attention to the people who used those implements.
(B)-(E) None of these choices reflects the basic pattern of pre-1970s scholarship on folklore:
an emphasis on a “cultural product” combined with a lack of interest in those who actually
“use” the product.
• Note how this question probes the exact same issue as the previous question. It’s
quite common on LSAT Reading Comp. for two or three questions in a set to deal
with the same issue; so be on the lookout for connections among questions. Use
your answers to the easier questions to help you solve the tougher ones.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
14. (D)
According to the last ¶ of the text, current folklore scholarship is concerned with analyzing
the links between specific pieces of folklore and the larger society from which it emerged.
Hence, “context” here refers to the “environment” and “circumstances” surrounding a
piece of folklore.
(A), (C), and (E) are all beyond the scope of the passage, which doesn’t deal either with the
internal relationships among different parts of a piece of folklore or with the connection
between folklore and physical locale.
(B) The text doesn’t delve into the issue of successive interpretations of the same piece of
folklore by different scholars.
• “Vocabulary-in-context” questions are uncommon on the LSAT, but you may see
one on test day. If you do, read the lines around the word or phrase in question to
get a sense of how it’s used in the text.
15. (B)
Abraham’s book is “notable” (line 43) but “unfortunately” (line 46) lacks a key element, and
that amounts to less than 100% endorsement.
(A) The “approval” cannot be “wholehearted” given lines 46-48.
(C), (D), and (E) all ignore the reference to Abraham’s book being “notable.” (Moreover,
they’re all so close in meaning that it’s almost impossible to choose among them.)
• When two or more choices are functionally identical, none of them can be correct,
because the right answer must be categorically correct and the other four
categorically wrong.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
PASSAGE 3—Pocock and Political Discourse
(Q. 16-21)
Topic and Scope: Pocock’s approach to political discourse; specifically, his use of
linguistic analysis to interpret the political discourse of the past.
Purpose and Main Idea: The author’s purpose is to describe and critique Pocock’s
methodology. His specific main idea is that Pocock’s methodology is a valuable tool for
understanding past political discourse, even if it doesn’t fully explain each and every
historical document.
Paragraph Structure: ¶1 describes Pocock’s basic methodology and compares it
(favorably) to traditional methods of interpreting political texts of the past. ¶2 describes
Pocock’s work: how he has applied his methodology to investigate “civic humanism” in
eighteenth-century England.
¶3 continues the discussion of Pocock’s work, noting that his analysis of political discourse
in eighteenth-century America doesn’t ring as true as his analysis of English political
discourse. Nevertheless, the author ends the passage by saying that, although Pocock’s
work isn’t entirely on the mark, his methodology is certainly on the right track.
The Big Picture:
• The passage begins unpromisingly. Take the opening sentence, for instance: Many
examinees’ heads were swimming as early as line 7. Note, too, the sleight-of-hand in
terms of topic and scope: Pocock disappears from the passage until line 22, yet turns
out to be the central figure. This kind of thing is very rare in LSAT passages. And
the passage stays about as difficult as it begins.
• The answer, of course, is to get a lot of mileage out of the other three passages—
which do turn out to be more manageable—and try to budget your time so that you
end up having more than the average 8 mins. or so when you finally take this
passage on.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
The Questions:
16. (C)
This choice neatly captures the author’s topic, scope, and purpose; and it clearly echoes
the last sentence of the passage in its critical approval of Pocock’s work.
(A), (B) “Civic humanism” (A) and “eighteenth-century political texts” (B) are certainly
prominent aspects of this passage. But the main focus of this text is on Pocock’s
methodology and its application to eighteenth-century political texts. Yet neither of these
choices even mentions Pocock.
(D) concentrates on a detail that emerges only in ¶3.
(E) plays on a detail in ¶1.
• The answer to many questions in a Reading Comp. question set often ties into
information at the end of the passage. So, a word of advice: Don’t just skim over the
last sentences of the passage on the assumption that they don’t contain important
information.
17. (C)
The association of English whigs and “a vocabulary of economic progress” is explicitly
made in lines 32-34, but this passage is so dense that you are perhaps to be forgiven if you
missed it.
(A) Tempting if your outside associations of Jefferson label him as a populist or
“progressive,” but we’re specifically told that, to Pocock, Jefferson echoed Tory vocabulary
(lines 42-45). The author disagrees, of course, but the focus of the question is Pocock’s view.
(B) To make this choice work you have to go to way too much trouble. Once you hear
Pocock label Jefferson a closet Tory (lines 42-45), you have to assume that Jefferson’s
opponents, the Federalists, were therefore closet Whigs, and then assume that the
Federalists must therefore have adopted the Whig political vocabulary mentioned a
paragraph ago. Yikes! Far less risky to grab the explicit right answer in lines 32-34.
(D), (E) Au contraire. The Tories are cited as the antithesis of the Whigs, and the rural
landowners are identified with the former. Both groups’ vocabulary, inferably, is that “of
public spirit and self-sufficiency” (lines 29-30), not “economic progress.”
• This is a rare LSAT question in that we are asked to do little more than locate a
detail. Why is it rare? Because it’s usually so easy to find an explicit reference that
they don’t waste a question on it. Why do we get one here? Because this passage is
unusually impenetrable, so quickly finding anything specific in it is evidence of
skill. Nothing happens by accident in the creation of an LSAT.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
18. (D)
To the author, “Pocock’s ideas have proved fertile” (lines 39-40), and thus it is fitting “to
applaud the historian [that’s Pocock, in case you have fallen asleep by the end] who” (lines
59-60) while not 100% successful, has made political vocabularies a vital topic. The
author’s attitude, then, is much more positive than negative.
(A) 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong. “Fruitful” is positive enough as a characterization of one of
Pocock’s key assumptions, but “cant” (line 39) is Namier speaking of political language in
the 1700s, and is way too negative to ascribe to the author as a judgment on Pocock.
(B) “Sharp” is positive, but as used here it describes a “contrast’ (line 16), not a
characteristic of Pocock. And “elitist” at line 46 is Jefferson’s characterization of English
Tories.
(C) 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong, but in reverse order. “Controversial” is applied to some of
Pocock’s theories, but the “naiveté” is that of the theorists who preceded Pocock.
(E) “Importance” sounds okay, but in line 55 it’s used in connection with different
eighteenth-century political vocabularies, not Pocock. “Simply” doesn’t have either
positive or negative overtones.
• If you kept in mind the author’s generally positive attitude toward Pocock’s work,
you should have zeroed in on choice (D) rather quickly.
19. (B)
This choice nicely paraphrases the author’s criticism (lines 17-21) of the method of political
analysis used in the 1950s.
(A) The keyword “while” (line 13) indicates that the author contrasts the assumptions of
the 1950s with the way literary historians derive the meaning of a political text.
(C) is beyond the scope of the passage, which never suggests that political texts can be
“read in...different ways” depending on one’s philosophic bent.
(D) This is an assumption made by Pocock, not analysts of the 1950s.
(E) The author is critical of the 1950s methodology for assuming that historical knowledge
wasn’t relevant to the interpretation of documents.
• Whenever you’re given a line number in the question stem, the answer to the
question will be in the lines around that number. Don’t endorse any choice that
strays too far from the relevant portion of text.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
20. (D)
In lines 41-54, the author argues that Pocock erred in applying the same “linguistic
dichotomy” to both England and America. What works for England, the author asserts,
doesn’t necessarily work for America.
(A) is beyond the scope of the passage. Pocock concerns himself with political discourse
only.
(B) It’s the author, not Pocock, who “denigrates” the role of analytic philosophers in
analyzing political texts.
(C), (E) The author wholeheartedly endorses Pocock’s interpretation of eighteenth-century
political discourse in England.
• This is an excellent example of why it’s important to keep track of the gist of each
paragraph of the passage. If you remembered that the author critiques Pocock only
in the last paragraph, you could have gone straight there and quickly discovered that
(D) is correct.
21. (A)
¶1 describes Pocock’s basic method of studying political discourse; ¶s 2 and 3 describe the
application of this method to the cases of eighteenth-century England and America; and ¶3
evaluates the merits of Pocock’s method in light of its application to these cases. (A)
reflects this sequence.
(B) The author has reservations about Pocock’s work, and he states them after a
presentation of the evidence.
(C) What hypothesis? This passage describes and evaluates a scholarly mode of inquiry.
(D) The author does evaluate Pocock’s work and does suggest a future direction for
research, but this choice says nothing about all of the description of Pocock’s work.
(E) What comparisons and contrasts? What categories of evaluation? What framework?
• If you’ve got a good grasp of the structure and purpose of the passage, questions
with abstract-sounding answer choices won’t be difficult to decipher.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
PASSAGE 4—Black Economic Progress
(Q. 22-27)
Topic and Scope: Black economic progress; specifically, the effects civil rights laws and
educational opportunities have had on Black economic progress.
Purpose and Main Idea: The author’s purpose is to counter an argument regarding Black
economic progress. Her specific main idea is that civil rights laws, not increased
educational opportunities, account for recent Black economic progress.
Paragraph Structure: ¶s 1 and 2 are descriptive in nature. ¶1 outlines the relevant civil
rights laws, while ¶2 explains the “continuous change” hypothesis, which argues that Black
economic progress should be attributed to improved educational opportunities rather
than civil rights laws.
¶s 3 and 4, to the contrary, are argumentative in nature. In ¶3, the author cites several
reasons to explain why educational opportunities can’t account for Black economic
progress. In ¶4, she claims that the economic progress made by Blacks since the mid-1960s
is directly attributable to the civil rights legislation of the mid-1960s.
The Big Picture:
• Not a promising place to begin work on the Reading Comp. section. Why? The
author’s voice doesn’t enter the picture until ¶3. The first couple of ¶s bombard you
with a lot of detail without giving you any clear signals about where the passage is
headed. In general, it’s best to work first on passages where topic, scope, and
authorial purpose are clear early on. These passages lend themselves to scoring
quick and easy points.
• When a passage contains a lot of details, it’s easy to get bogged down in them. Don’t
let this happen to you on test day. Remember, you’re only going to get questioned
about one or two details. As you read through the passage, move past details
quickly, noting where they appear, so that you can look them up easily should you
have to.
The Questions:
22. (E)
Title VII prohibits all employers “from making employment decisions on the basis of race.”
Executive Order 11,246, on the other hand, concerns only government contractors. In other
words, Title VII “governs hiring practices in a wider variety of workplaces.”
(A), (B) It’s Executive Order 11,246 that calls for monitoring employers to ensure minority
representation (A) and deals with government contractors (B).
(C) and (D) are beyond the scope of the passage, which never brings up the issues of wage
discrimination (C) or minority representation in government (D).
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
• If you reread ¶1, this question yields a quick and easy point. If you try to answer on
a vague recollection of the text, you can quickly lose that point. If you’re unsure
about a detail, reread, reread, reread!
23. (B)
Lines 30-32 state that, in the mid-1940s, Blacks were catching up to Whites in amount of
schooling, but were not yet equal. (B) makes precisely the same point in a different way.
(A), (C), and (D) are all beyond the scope of the passage. There’s no mention of White
school expenditures (A), Black or White school curriculums (B), or the general quality of
White schools (D).
(E) 1/2 right, 1/2 wrong. Lines 34-35 say that teachers at Black schools did experience wage
increases in the mid-1940s, but we aren’t told whether wages increased at a greater or lesser
rate than wages for teachers at White schools.
• In inference questions, it’s common to find choices that address issues that the
passage doesn’t discuss. Make sure that the choice you endorse is in fact dealt with
in the text.
24. (C)
The author’s specific main idea, as we’ve already mentioned, is that Black economic
progress should be attributed to civil rights legislation, not to better educational
opportunities. In making this argument, she rebuts the “continuous change” hypothesis,
which asserts just the opposite.
(A) The author contends that the “continuous change” hypothesis is incorrect, not that it’s
incomplete.
(B), (D) The author does indeed discuss both the “impact of education” (B) and “Black
economic progress before and after the 1960s” (D), but these are mere details intended to
support her larger argument.
(E) The author provides her own perspective about the factors behind Black economic
progress, not the “current view.”
• A simple “verb scan” eliminates choices (B) and (D), because this passage is
argumentative, not descriptive. A “verb scan” can often be very helpful in narrowing
down the choices in global questions.
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LSAT PREP ________________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section I
25. (C)
This choice neatly summarizes the essence of lines 12-16.
(A), (D), (E) All we’re told about continuity theorists is that they don’t believe that
legislation accounts for recent Black economic progress; we aren’t told anything regarding
their general attitude about legislation’s effects on discrimination.
(B) Continuity theorists claim that Blacks have made progress in education, but they don’t
ascribe this progress to the law.
• Correct choices will always stick close to the spirit of the text. If you have to go
through a lot of mental gymnastics to justify a choice, look for another choice.
26. (A)
This concession is sandwiched between information intended to bolster the claim that civil
rights laws have contributed to Black economic progress. Hence, its meant to strengthen
that claim by explaining away a possible objection to it.
(B) The only cause of Black economic progress that the author cites is civil rights
legislation.
(C), (D) The author concedes nothing to the continuity theorists (C). Nor does she alter her
argument in light of their hypothesis (D).
(E) This is scope of the entire passage, not just the lines that come after 60.
• When a question asks about the why of a detail, read the lines around the detail itself
to get a sense of the context in which it appears. This is the key to understanding
why the author put the detail in the text.
27. (D)
The “continuous change” hypothesis claims that Black economic progress is unrelated to
government actions. Similarly, (D) features a scenario in which progress is made without
government assistance.
(A), (B), (C), (E) In each of these scenarios, a problem is solved through government
intervention.
• If one choice differs from the rest in a fundamental way, it’s a good bet that it’s the
correct answer.
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SECTION II:
LOGICAL REASONING
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
1. (A)
By providing a rationale for prohibiting an otherwise legal activity—namely, harm to
which others must be exposed—(A) justifies Walter’s recommendation for the airlines.
Smoking is that otherwise legal activity, and the nonsmokers on a plane are the “others”
who can’t avoid harm.
(B) “Only if” is the tipoff here. Walter’s purpose isn’t to describe a precondition for a ban
on smoking, but to recommend a ban in one specific situation. Even if (B) matched up well
to every element of Walter’s argument—which it doesn’t, because the reference to “most
situations” has no connection to what Walter says—(B) still wouldn’t justify his proposal,
but would simply establish a condition necessary for a smoking ban.
(C) The “legal activity” would have to be smoking, but how would one “modify” it? By
using a cigarette holder? C’mon.
(D) is a justification for keeping smokers out of planes, not for keeping planes free of
smoke.
(E) is a justification for making an activity, presumably smoking, “legal in all situations.”
This one is way off.
• A “principle” question is generally nothing more than a matter of matching up the
topic, scope, and terms of the argument to the choices.
• In such questions, be sure to translate carefully the abstract elements of the answer
choices to the specific elements of the stimulus.
2. (D)
“. . . your challenge is ineffectual, since you are simply jealous. . . .” Those nine words are
all you need to answer this “logical flaw” question, and having read them you should have
jumped to the choices and grabbed (D). One is never permitted to rebut an opponent by
criticizing his or her personality, character, or motives. Doing so is called an ad hominem
attack, but LSAC doesn’t expect you to know the Latin term; (D) is how the testmakers
typically word it.
(A) The chemist restates no claim, and the use of the Evidence Keyword “since” establishes
that he does offer evidence. It’s not effective evidence, but it’s evidence nonetheless.
(B) is only tempting if you decide that since the physicist believes that “measurements and
calculations are inaccurate,” the chemist must believe that they are accurate. But as we’ve
noted, the chemist disagrees with the physicist on personal grounds, not on the grounds of
accuracy.
(C) Nope, in this context “solve” has only one meaning: to locate the answer to a problem.
(E) To “rest on a contradiction” means to base your argument on two premises that cannot
both be true. The chemist does contradict, or take issue with, the physicist, but there are no
conflicting premises within the chemist’s argument.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
• An accusation of personal attack is often made in LSAT answer choices when the
question is “What’s the flaw?” Select it only if the speaker does, in fact, slam his/her
opponent. If there’s no personal attack, the speaker is committing some other flaw.
3. (E)
The argument proposes a cause-and-effect relationship: Because ulcer patients possessed
this bacteria strain, and someone accidentally ingested the strain and got his first ulcer,
therefore the strain probably brings on ulcers. Hard to prove, but easy to rebut: If one were
to find test subjects who possess the bacteria strain but no ulcer, that would certainly toss
the theory out the window, wouldn’t it? Now, (E) found no such test subjects out of a large
sample: Many people without ulcers were examined and no traces of the bacteria strain
were found. Hence, (E) supports the reasoning by short-circuiting a major possible
exception.
Think of it in formal logic terms. The stimulus essentially argues that “If you have the
bacteria strain, then you’ll get an ulcer,” the contrapositive of which is “If you don’t have
an ulcer, then you won’t have the bacteria strain.” And there they are in (E), 2,000 people
who fit that definition—no ulcer, and no bacteria either.
(A) A secondary disease is outside the scope of an investigation of whether a particular
cause results in a particular effect.
(B) The stimulus doesn’t argue that the bacteria causes only ulcers, so the presence or
absence of other ailments is irrelevant.
(C) Even if we accept that one can learn about human diseases from studying other
animals—a notion that comes from without the stimulus, not from within—the absence of
ulcers in (C) would weaken the case for the causal agent, not strengthen it.
(D) appeals to an expert’s authority. Phooey. Experts can be wrong.
• To strengthen an argument doesn’t mean to prove it. It means to strengthen the
connection between evidence and conclusion. One way to do so, as in Question 3
here, is to counter a possible objection to that connection.
• LSAT wrong answers often appeal to authority. Never choose answers like (D)—
unless, of course, the stimulus argument is appealing to authority and you’re asked
for the logical flaw.
4. (D)
The stimulus conclusion—to which we seek a parallel—is hypothetical: Should one of these
test subjects own a pet, he or she would have a lower average blood pressure. The evidence?
Lowered blood pressure apparently caused by petting animals. (D) has it right. (D) uses
the relaxing caused by a short boat ride in the same way that the stimulus uses the lower
blood pressure caused by animal petting: as evidence for the hypothesis that ownership of
an object (a boat and a pet, respectively) would cause a general improvement of the trait
(relaxing and lower b.p., respectively).
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
(A) is only superficially similar to the stimulus. Its evidence lacks the sense of one action
having a particular effect on one limited group of people, and its conclusion fails to allege
that ownership of an object would have a greater effect.
(B),(C) Each errs by focusing on a policy recommendation—retaining a car and dumping
certain plants, respectively. The stimulus never recommends anything; it predicts what
would happen (lower blood pressure) if the test subjects owned a pet.
(E), like (A), may be tempting because of its hypothetical conclusion. But in the stimulus,
petting an animal and owning a pet are two different things—which is in fact the root of the
flawed logic: Since they are different things, one cannot assume that the salutary effect
caused by petting an animal would be repeated, let alone intensified, by pet ownership.
But (E)’s one coat vs. two coats lacks that difference. Two coats of paint probably would
make for a whiter fence.
• Your #1 tactic in Parallel Reasoning questions should always be to explore the nature
of the evidence and conclusion. What kind of conclusion is drawn, and what kind of
evidence used?
5. (A)
This discrepancy (or “paradox”) hinges on the definition of “best bill collector.” How can
he be the best if his collection rate is the worst? Maybe you were able to predict the answer
and maybe you weren’t, but we hope you recognized it as soon as you saw it: The reason
his collection rate is so bad is that he’s assigned to the hardest-core cases—as would befit
the best employee in the firm.
(B) is akin to (D) back in Question 3. What Young’s co-workers think of him is as irrelevant
to this paradox as the expertise of the stomach researcher is to the cause of ulcers.
(C) deepens the paradox, by suggesting that his crummy rate of collections is in fact his
norm.
(D) is laughably irrelevant—though if you chose (D) you’re probably not laughing. We’re
not told whether Young’s credit dept. job involved collections, and if it did, whether
Young was good or bad at it. Not that any of that would make any difference to his
performance at this job.
(E) Length of tenure is irrelevant too, having nothing to do with Young’s collection rate
belying his status as the best collector.
• A paradox usually emerges when the arguer makes a faulty assumption. Identify that
assumption and you usually will have resolved the paradox. And speaking of
assumptions. . . .
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
6. (B)
The author sees a bit of a paradox here: Ancient primates, such as the one whose jawbone
was found in Namibia, lived in dense forests, yet today Namibia is dry and treeless. To
resolve this paradox, the author concludes that Namibia’s landscape must have changed
over the centuries, but that assumes that that ape did, in fact, live in or near Namibia—
choice (B). If it didn’t—if it wandered into Namibia far from its forested homeland and
thereupon expired, or if perhaps the jawbone was blown by the wind or carried by
someone to that spot—then Namibia’s terrain need not have changed at all. Since (B), if
false, would weaken the argument, it is a necessary assumption.
(A) Modern apes are outside the scope of this argument. It’s modern Namibian terrain and
ancient apes that are at issue.
(C) Certainly the author believes that at least one ape—the one whose jawbone was
found—lived in Namibia between 10 and 15 million years ago. But apes prior to 15 million
years ago are outside the scope.
(D) Why apes lived in dense forests may or may not have anything to do with their diet.
And (D), like (A), errs by mentioning modern apes.
(E) provides an explanation as to how the change in Namibian terrain might have taken
place, but it’s far from the only possible one. In any event the author is arguing about
whether the change occurred, not how.
• Always use the Kaplan “Denial Test” to confirm whether you have indeed chosen a
necessary assumption. Note that the Denial Test is described above, beginning with
the words “If it didn’t. . . .”
7. (B)
Is job-related stress the #1 workplace problem? Our author concludes no, it’s not, because
most workers complain about boredom, not job stress. But if stress and boredom are
somehow related, then there’s no contradiction, and that’s essentially what we get in (B). (B)
implies that workers who explicitly complain about boredom are implicitly
demonstrating signs of stress; hence the two go hand in hand; hence stress is probably the
#1 problem.
(A),(D),(E) Non-complaining workers are outside the scope here, since the issue is “What’s
the most serious workplace problem?,” and the source of the evidence is those who are
making their complaints known. Workers who are relatively happy, for whatever reason,
aren’t part of this debate.
(C) doesn’t discuss complainers, either—just responders. And the “recentness” of
responses has nothing to do with the argument.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
• Keep an eye out for an argument whose flaw is that the author assumes an
opposition between X and Y without sufficient evidence; by showing that X and Y
can coexist, you will have weakened the argument. (Here, the author assumes that
workers cannot be complaining about boredom and stress simultaneously. But they
can!)
8. (A)
Keywords are the key to structure, and structure is the key to figuring out this author’s
conclusion quickly.
A yes/no question is posed: Should the government stop trying to figure out how much
toxin is O.K. in our food? Three potent Keywords govern what’s left, starting with “Only
if,” which as always signals a necessary condition—necessary, that is, for a Yes answer to the
question. “However” signals a contrast—i.e. a statement that that necessary condition has
not been fulfilled. And “furthermore” is a Continuation Keyword, which means “more of
the same.” Feel free to read more deeply into the stimulus if you like, but the sheer
structure leads to only one conclusion: A condition necessary for abandoning the
government’s efforts has not been met, hence the government should not abandon its
efforts—choice (A). (Note that (A) substitutes “should continue” for “should not
abandon”—a common testmaker tactic.)
(B) is the “Only if” clause—the condition necessary, in the author’s view, for the
government to abandon its efforts.
(C) is a very close paraphrase of the “However” clause—a piece of evidence suggesting
that the necessary condition has not been met.
(D) is an equally close paraphrase of the “Furthermore” clause—more evidence.
(E) cannot be the author’s conclusion, because the issue is not “Are the government’s
detection methods refined enough?”; no evidence either way is provided. (E) is a
misreading of the very last clause of the stimulus. Inferably the author would probably
approve of the government’s raising “the threshold of detection,” but only because of her
conclusion that detection needs to continue. . . which brings us back to (A).
• The techniques outlined in the explanation above are well worth your studying and
adopting for virtually every LR stimulus: (1) Put the key issue or conclusion into
your own words; (2) notice the Keywords that govern the structure; and (3) think
through what each Keyword portends. That’s critical reading! You’ve heard about
these techniques throughout your Kaplan course; perhaps seeing them worked out
here will prove helpful. And notice how similar this one is to Question 11, below.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
9. (E)
The stimulus for this inference question is more complex than most, but all four wrong
answers are arguably more obvious than most, so perhaps it balances out.
Over a quarter-century of labor-saving technologies, we’re told, workers have been able to
produce goods (“output”) a lot faster, with the potential result that a worker could put in
fewer hours and get more leisure time. However, there has not been correspondence: The
average output per hour has grown twice as fast as the average worker’s leisure time. (E)
follows from that last sentence: If the average worker is producing goods a lot faster but
isn’t working a lot fewer hours, then he must be producing more per week than he did a
quarter century ago, prior to the introduction of all those technologies.
Don’t see it? Check out the lameness of the other four choices:
(A) Nothing is ever said about workers’ spending habits or abilities.
(B) Job creation is never mentioned.
(C) The percentage of all persons who work is never even alluded to.
(D) “Anticipated” by whom? Nothing is mentioned about what was in people’s minds 25
years ago. (And even if “anticipated” is read as a paraphrase of “potentially,” all we’re told
is that the number of hours worked was potentially smaller and the number of leisure
hours potentially greater. Nothing about output expectations whatsoever.)
Sherlock Holmes had it right: When all other possibilities have been eliminated, what’s left,
however implausible, must be the truth.
• Never assume that an inference must combine all, or even most, of the statements in
the stimulus. Quite often—as here—the correct answer is just a rewrite or
consequence of one complex sentence.
10. (C)
Yet another paradox. A bunch of ancient Asian communities stopped hunting-andgathering and started cultivating their food. Their diet and health went to blazes compared
to the old days, and yet they never went back to hunting-and-gathering. How come? Prephrasing an answer might be tough, especially if you’re unfamiliar with the archaeological
terminology, but we hope that your search of the choices yielded (C) reasonably readily.
If, as (C) suggests, there were just too many people to make hunting-and-gathering viable,
why indeed would those ancient Asians go back to it, notwithstanding their dietary
problems?
(A), if anything, would provide a reason for the Asians to resume hunting-and-gathering—
to grab all that wild flora and fauna.
(B)’s contrast of stored vs. fresh foods has nothing to do with the argument at hand, and in
any case describes something that hunter-gatherers and agriculturalists had in common,
which doesn’t do the job.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
(D) rather comically implies that the Asians failed to return to hunting-and-gathering in
order to keep up with the Joneses elsewhere in the world. Huh?
(E) seems to imply that ancient Asians chose agriculture over hunting-and-gathering
because the former burned more calories and hence would make them buff up. But that
makes no sense: Remember that the agricultural peoples had a terrible diet and bad health
compared with the old hunter/gatherers. Concern for their well being would seem to
mandate returning to the old ways—which they failed to do. So (E), if anything, deepens
the paradox.
• Speculating about what the right answer might look like, contain, or be is a good
habit, but don’t take it to extremes. If nothing comes to you right away, don’t stand
still. Move briskly to the choices and assess them in whatever order strikes you as
easiest.
11. (E)
Just like Q. 8, this one begins with a question that the author is apparently going to attempt
to answer. There are only three possibilities allowed by the author to begin an article with
the phrase “in a surprise development”: the development was a surprise to the journalist
alone, the development was a surprise to some other person, and the development was a
surprise to people in general. In each case, the author says that the set phrase is
inappropriate. The argument’s conclusion, therefore, is (E): In no case is it a good
journalistic practice to begin a paragraph with the phrase “in a surprise development.”
(A) and (B) The journalist never describes circumstances in which it is appropriate to use
the phrase “in a surprise development.”
(C) Although the author does describe three distinct sorts of circumstances in which the
phrase is used, that’s not his conclusion; he makes that distinction in order to help him
arrive at his conclusion, that in no circumstances is it appropriate to use the phrase.
(D) This is way off; the author never discusses what’s permissible in summing up a story; he
only considers the phrase “in a surprise development” as an introduction, and even there
he finds it wanting.
• A wrong choice can be wrong for more than one reason; (D) for instance, besides
introducing the idea of a summation, doesn’t deal with the specific phrase “in a
surprise development,” which is what the author is interested in, but instead speaks
of the practice of making the general point that a development is a surprise, which is
a very different thing. This is a great example of a scope shift.
• The more logically a stimulus is organized, the easier it is to answer the question.
This is a dream stimulus: it begins with the question the argument is supposed to
answer, which immediately tells you what the conclusion is going to be about. It
proceeds to an orderly examination of all the possible cases that might bear on the
question, complete with Keywords and Keyword phrases (“the one remaining
possibility”).
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
12. (C)
Despite the technical jargon, this stimulus is actually made up of a bunch of formal logic
statements. Take the third sentence: If X (yellow to black), then either Y (polypyrroles form
on zeolites) or Z (polypyrroles form in zeolites). The last sentence tells us that X occurred
(yellow to black), but Y didn’t. From this we can deduce that Z must have occurred:
polypyrroles formed from pyrroles inside the zeolite. The second sentence tells us that
when polypyrroles form inside the zeolites, they form in delicate chains. Therefore, we can
infer (C): some of the pyrroles in which the zeolite was submerged formed into
polypyrrole chains.
(A) The stimulus says that the zeolite was “free of any pyrrole” before it was submerged,
so (A) is impossible.
(B) Since the polypyrroles must have formed in and not on the zeolite, they must have
been formed as chains, not lumps.
(D) There’s no reason why some pyrrole couldn’t attach itself to the zeolite; all we know is
that no polypyrroles formed from pyrroles on the zeolite.
(E) Since the polypyrroles formed inside the zeolite, we know some pyrroles reached the
zeolite’s inner channels; we have absolutely no reason to infer that only a “little” did so.
• Don’t try to swallow this whole stimulus at one gulp. Read it quickly first to get the
structure. Once you understand that the stimulus gives us a general description
followed by a specific case, the whole picture becomes much easier to understand -you see how the general rules about zeolites and pyrroles relate to the specific case,
and the individual facts fall into a pattern.
• You don’t need to know anything about polypyrroles and zeolites; it doesn’t even
matter if there are no such things. All you need to do is understand the relationships
between the objects, which in this case take the form of familiar formal logic
conditions.
13. (E)
The author says that the pedigree standards applied to working dogs ignore those genetic
traits that allow the dogs to serve the purpose for which they were originally bred; as a
result, those practical traits may be lost. She decides that the standards set by pedigree
organizations for working dogs should include the ability to do the work for which they
were intended. We’re looking for a principle that supports this conclusion. (E) says that
organizations that set standards for activities or “products” (and presumably pedigree
dogs fit this designation) should ensure that they can serve their original purposes; i.e.
according to (E), the author is right and pedigree organizations should ensure that
“working” dogs are still able to work.
(A) talks about the sort of standards organizations should not set, but it doesn’t justify the
author’s conclusion about what standards pedigree organizations should set.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
(B) The author isn’t in favor of enforcing those standards currently in effect, but favors
setting new standards.
(C) argues that organizations should see that their standards are met; the author is attacking
the prior question of what sort of standards should be set in the first place.
(D) The author doesn’t favor standards requiring working ability because today’s
pedigree dogs will actually be required to work; she argues in favor of the standards
because they reflect the original purpose of the breeds.
• Before you look at the choices, see if you can follow the author’s reasoning
yourself—how does she move from what is to what should be? Here you might say:
Why does the author think standards should require working ability? What does the
author say about working ability? Well, it’s the reason for which working dogs were
originally developed, and it’s in danger of being lost. So the author thinks it’s
important to keep the original purpose . . . therefore, (E) stands out as the right
answer.
14. (B)
The author is attempting to establish the conclusion that standards set by pedigree
organizations for working dogs should require working ability. The phrase “certain traits
like herding ability risk being lost among pedigreed dogs” is intended to support this
conclusion. The phrase itself is supported, since it occurs at the end of a chain of reasoning:
Pedigree organizations don’t specify work traits among their standards; breeders only
maintain traits specified by pedigree organizations; traits not maintained by breeders risk
being lost; therefore work traits like herding ability risk being lost. As (B) says, the phrase is
a “subsidiary” conclusion; that is, it’s a conclusion drawn on the way to the main
conclusion.
(A) On the contrary—as we’ve seen, it’s supported by several pieces of evidence.
(C) Far from acknowledging a possible objection to the author’s proposal, the phrase states
the main reason for the author’s proposal.
(D) is dead wrong. The argument accepts the claim that traits like herding ability risk being
lost; the author’s proposal is intended to avert this very real danger.
(E) No earlier claim depends on the phrase; rather, the phrase is supported by earlier claims,
and in turn gives support to the conclusion.
• Keep an eye on Keywords; the “since” in the second-to-last sentence tells you that
the phrase in question appears as a conclusion, which points to (B) and rules out (A).
• In order to understand where any given phrase fits in an argument, you have to
understand how the argument as a whole works. Hopefully, you figured this out en
route to answering Q. 13, in which case Q. 14 shouldn’t take very long.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
15. (C)
You may not have been able to pre-phrase this “strongly-supported conclusion,” but
hopefully choice (C) made sense to you upon evaluation. The arthritis medication works
by inhibiting the functioning of the hormone that causes pain and swelling. However, the
hormone doesn’t only cause pain and swelling in cases of rheumatoid arthritis; it’s also
normally activated in response to injury and infection. It therefore seems reasonable to
suppose that the medication would inhibit the normal action of the hormone in response to
an injury. This in turn supports (C)’s contention that a person taking the medication might
sustain a joint injury and, because of a lack of the pain and swelling that normally
accompany such an injury, be unaware of it.
(A) There’s no evidence that the medication would repair cell damage that has already
occurred; quite the contrary, since the only action ascribed to the medication is that of
inhibiting the functioning of the hormone.
(B) No mention of harmful side effects is made in the argument, so it’s impossible to know
whether or not any side effects would be outweighed by benefits.
(D) We have no idea whether the hormone inhibited by the medication has anything to do
with diabetes or lupus, so there’s no reason to conclude that the medication would be of
any use in combating these diseases.
(E) On the contrary, we’d expect the medication to have some effect on any joint disease
involving the production of the hormone that causes pain and swelling. We don’t know
that there are any other such diseases besides rheumatoid arthritis, but we certainly can’t
conclude that there aren’t.
• Medicine is a common topic on the Logical Reasoning section and “side effect”
choices, like (B), are very common on medical questions. Unless the stimulus
specifically mentions side effects, you can’t assume anything about them. (By the
same token, the author isn’t entitled to assume anything about side effects either;
sometimes on a Weaken the Argument question a choice will bring up the fact that
the author has overlooked the possibility of side effects.)
• Pay attention to the formality, or lack thereof, of the question stem. They’re just
looking for a choice that is “strongly supported” here; the correct answer need not be
as strict as a logical inference that absolutely must be true. Notice how the correct
answer is nicely qualified by the word “could.”
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
16. (E)
The author has concluded that for the amaryllis plant, going dormant is a positive thing,
and that therefore an amaryllis plant’s owner should actually induce dormancy in his plant.
But the evidence doesn’t support this; it seems much more likely that going dormant is
simply the amaryllis plant’s defense against the drought that occurs in its natural habitat. If
so, then without a drought there’s probably no need for a period of dormancy. As (E)
recognizes, the author assumes that there’s more to dormancy than a defensive reaction,
that the dormancy confers some other positive benefit on amaryllis plants.
(A), (B) The author only speaks of amaryllis plants, and so need not assume anything about
other plants or how other plants compare to amaryllis plants.
(C) The author never specified when water should be withheld from amaryllis plants kept
as houseplants, only that it should be done at some time each year to induce dormancy.
The lack of specificity in the argument regarding the time frame for withholding water
kills this one.
(D) Although the author believes dormancy is good for amaryllis plants, he needn’t
assume that the only thing that could go wrong with an amaryllis plant is too short a period
of dormancy.
• An assumption is something that’s necessary to establish the conclusion; therefore,
it can’t go beyond the scope of that conclusion. You can quickly reject (A) and (B)
because they broaden the scope of the argument from amaryllis plants, the author’s
only interest, to other kinds of plants, about which the author says nothing.
17. (D)
The author accepts the theory that yawning is most powerfully triggered by seeing
someone else yawn because 1) a lot of people believe the theory today and 2) according to
“historians of popular culture” people all over the world have commonly believed the
theory. That’s not a very convincing argument; we’d like to have something more than
widespread belief to fall back on. That’s the flaw (D) points out; the argument relies on
opinion, whereas the question under consideration—“what triggers yawning?”—is a
scientific, or factual question, the answer to which needs to be supported by substantive
factual evidence.
(A) The author doesn’t indulge in circular argumentation—his evidence, albeit weak, is
certainly different from his conclusion.
(B) The author never defines “historians of popular culture,” but there’s no reason to
suppose that popular beliefs about yawning are outside their area of expertise.
(C) The author refers to common popular belief; he makes no reference to particular cases,
either typical or atypical.
(E) The author concludes that seeing other people yawn is the “most irresistible” cause of
yawning; he never claims, or assumes, that it’s the only cause of yawning.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
• Whenever you see a reference to “popular” or “commonly-held” belief on the LSAT,
it’s a good bet that the belief is being set up to take a fall. A good argument is not
supposed to rely on common opinion, but rather on logic.
18. (B)
The stimulus in this Parallel Reasoning question is so formal in nature that it can be boiled
down to algebra:
All A are B (All gourmet cooks enjoy variety).
No B is C (No one who enjoys variety prefers bland food).
Therefore, no C is A (or if you prefer, All C are not A, same difference: The conclusion is
that gourmet cooks and preferrers of bland food have nothing in common).
In correct choice (B), Huang Collection paintings are A, abstract paintings are B, and
paintings included in next week’s auction are C, and if you plug those terms into the
algebra above, you’ll see that (B) functions identically. Here’s how the wrong choices play
out:
(A) All A are B. All B are C. Therefore, all A are C. This is the classic Aristotelian deductive
syllogism, by the way. The sheer absence of a negative or “not” term means that you could
have rejected (A) right away.
(C) All A are B. No A is C. Therefore, no C is B. Note the second premise’s subtle shift away
from the original.
(D) All A are B. No C is B. (So far so good, actually. Remember that No B is C is the same
as No C is B. They’re reversible.) Therefore, no B is C. (Oops; close but no cigar.)
(E) All A are B. . . . and here algebra falls short, because the remainder of (E) brings in
complex terms like prices in general, adequate reflection of price, true value, and next
week’s auction. Because (E) is not as strictly written as the stimulus, it, like (A), can be
quickly rejected.
• Parallel Reasoning questions that lend themselves to an algebraic approach don’t
come along all that often. Most are like Q. 4 in this section and Qs. 13 and 22 in the
other Logical Reasoning section, written less formally and hence not amenable to an
algebraic treatment. When algebra can work, it’s a great time saver.
• A reminder: In formal logic, “No” statements (e.g. No B are C) and “Some”
statements (e.g. Some X are Y) are reversible—it doesn’t matter in which order you
mention the terms. Come up with a few real-life examples of each and you’ll see that
that’s so. But we cannot reverse All statements or If/Then statements and expect them
to remain true. The LSAT tests that key distinction often.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
19. (A)
Because no one witnessed the meeting between the minister and the opposition party
leader except for the minister’s aide, the author concludes that it must have been the
minister’s aide who provided the information that brought the minister down, rather than a
political enemy of the minister. Does this make sense? After all, the opposition leader was
at the meeting too; mightn’t he or she have given the information to the newspapers? As (A)
points out, the evidence provided by the author, makes a competing conclusion—that the
opposition leader spilled the beans—just as likely as the author’s conclusion.
(B) The author never states that the chain of events was inevitable; that is, he never assumes
that, once the information from the secret meeting was released, it was inevitable that the
minister be brought down.
(C) The author never discusses any “different occasion”; both evidence and conclusion
concern this particular finance minister and this secret meeting.
(D) The evidence is entirely relevant to the point at issue, which is “who was responsible
for bringing the finance minister down?”
(E) The evidence is that the effect (the minister’s downfall) was impossible without the
action (giving the information to the newspaper). This means that the latter was necessary
for the former; the author never treats the evidence of the action as though it was sufficient
to bring about the effect.
• The descriptions of the flaw are all very abstract and general. Because it can be time
consuming in such cases to compare each choice to the stimulus argument, it’s wise
to read the argument carefully enough to have a good idea of the flaw before
attacking the choices. Pre-phrasing something as simple as “Hey! What about the
opposition party leader?” can be an enormous help.
20. (A)
Evans discounts those critics who dismiss him and his poetry, because he says they
themselves are not true poets and only a true poet can function as a critic of poetry. Why
does he say that they’re not true poets? He’s read their poetry and doesn’t think much of
it—it doesn’t “convey genuine poetic creativity,” as true poetry should. He’s relying on his
own judgment of poetry; therefore, he’s assumes that he’s a fit judge of poetry and poetic
creativity, and according to his own criteria, he must also be assuming that he is a true
poet. As (A) points out, he’s assuming exactly what he set out to prove, that the critics are
wrong and he’s a true poet.
(B) Evans never assumes or implies that everyone is either a poet or a critic. All she says is
that if you’re not one, you can’t be the other.
(C) Evans never implies that a poet’s standing can be judged independently of his or her
poetry; in fact, the criteria given for a true poet is one whose works conveys genuine poetic
creativity.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
(D) Far from making an absolute distinction between critics and poets, the author says that
only true poets can function as critics of poetry.
(E) On the contrary, true poets would be in a position to criticize their own work.
• It’s always important to understand what sort of evidence the author uses, especially
on questions that ask you to critique the author’s logic. Our evidence here is a
general principle (about who is entitled to judge poetry) and the author’s opinion
about how the principle applies to his critics. You should always be suspicious of an
opinion as evidence. Ask yourself: How well grounded is the opinion? How
qualified is the person (or persons) holding the opinion?
21. (E)
Ouch!—one of the nastiest question stems we’ve come across in a long time. If there was
ever a question worth blowing off temporarily strictly based on its stem, this is it. Be that as
it may, let’s take the stem apart to see what they’re after here.
The correct choice will be able to serve as the premise of an argument against the claim,
but it must be an argument that relies on the principle. So we’re not looking for something
that by itself weakens the claim, but rather the basis for an argument that, if based on the
principle, would weaken the claim. Tricky, eh? According to the principle, if one claims
that Country X lowered its taxes to serve the advantage of foreign companies, one must
show how the foreign companies’ interests actually helped bring about the change; that is,
one must show that the reason for the tariffs’ being lowered was the usefulness of that
course of action to foreign companies. Since we’re supposed to counter the claim that
Country X’s tariffs were lowered in order to help foreign companies, we should therefore
look for a choice that weakens the connection between foreign companies and the change
in policy. The best choice is (E); if there’s no evidence that foreign companies themselves
played a role in inducing the change then, according to the principle, it becomes much
more difficult to explain the change by the fact that it served their interests.
(A) The principle says nothing about the interests of any second group, like consumers,
being served, so (A) doesn’t apply to the principle.
(B) introduces new economic considerations like importers’ profits; the principle had
nothing to do with such things, only with who was responsible for inducing the change.
(C) discusses the short-term effects of the change on Country X; we’re only interested in
whether the change occurred in response to foreign interests.
(D) is better than (C) because at least it tells us about foreign companies, but it doesn’t tell
us what we wanted to know—whether they helped bring about the change.
• This question was very likely tough and time consuming; you may decide to mark it,
skip it, and come back to it later.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
• If you decided to go ahead with it, read the question thoroughly and understand it
before you go on to the choices. If you took the time to understand what type of
choice you were looking for, you could reject the wrong answers quickly by
checking them against the principle.
22. (E)
The scientist discovers that in the tropics, migratory fish generally follow a migration
pattern that’s exactly the opposite of the pattern followed by fish in temperate zones: they
mature in fresh water and spawn in the ocean. Does this disprove the scientist’s theory that
food availability determines migration patterns? That’s impossible to know, unless we
know something about the food availability in the tropics—is there more or less food
available in the ocean? Unless we know the answer to (E), we don’t know whether the fish
in the tropics are acting in accordance with the scientist’s theory or in violation of that
theory.
(A) completely ignores the issue of food availability which is the whole basis of the theory;
the scientist said nothing about temperature, so (A) is irrelevant.
(B) introduces an irrelevant distinction; the scientist was interested in comparing the total
amount of nourishment available in the different places. The point is that fish need a lot of
nourishment when they mature and little when they spawn— it doesn’t matter what type of
food they eat to get that nourishment.
(C) Because the scientist is talking about general migration patterns, it doesn’t matter if
there are a few exceptions to the rule. Thus, if there were a species of fish with populations
in both areas, it wouldn’t make any difference to the theory whether the fish exhibited the
same or different migration patterns in the two different zones; what matters is what fish
“generally” do.
(D) is pretty plainly irrelevant. The total number of species has nothing to do with the role
of food in determining migration patterns.
• Since you want to know whether the new information disproves the hypothesis,
focus on the terms in the information and the hypothesis. The hypothesis ties
migration patterns to food availability; the new information only discusses migration
patterns. The correct choice must therefore establish whether there’s any link
between the new information and food availability.
• In a question like this, if you can’t decide whether one of the choices is relevant, try
answering the question it poses in both the affirmative and the negative. Does it
make any obvious difference to the hypothesis if you answer the question “yes”
rather than “no”? If it doesn’t, move on.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
23. (B)
According to the author, computers can only solve problems by following some set of
mechanically applicable rules, and some problems just can’t be solved that way; it follows
therefore that no computer can solve that type of problem. But the author takes this one
step further; she says that no computer will be able to do everything that some human mind
can do. She must be assuming that some human mind can do what she’s just shown no
computer can do—that is, she assumes that some human mind (or “at least one” human
mind, as (B) says) can solve one of those problems that can’t be solved by following a
mechanically applicable set of rules.
(A) The author needs to establish that some non-mechanical problems are solvable by
humans; it wouldn’t help to assume that there’s some non-mechanical problem that’s
UNsolvable by humans.
(C), (D) and (E) all make the same mistake. Since computers also have the ability to solve
problems by following mechanically applicable rules, human ability to solve such
problems doesn’t show that humans can do something that computers can’t. It wouldn’t
help the author to assume that one such problem can be solved by every human (C), that
every such problem (of a certain sub-type) is solvable by almost every human (D), or that
every such problem is solvable by some human (E). We’re only interested in human ability
to solve problems that can’t be solved by following sets of mechanical rules.
• Remember your logical terms: “Some” means “at least one”; “no” means “not any,”
“not one.”
• Be on the look out for inappropriate use of “some,” “every,” “many,” etc. in the
choices. When the stimulus speaks of “some human minds” you can be almost
positive that any choice that speaks of “every human mind” or even “almost every
human mind” is wrong. “Some” strictly means “at least one”; you can’t expand it. By
the same token, choices that apply such terms where they don’t occur in the stimulus
(“more than one” set of rules) should also be rejected.
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LSAT PREP _______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section II
24. (A)
The author is trying to demonstrate that the typical response given to the survey is
ambiguous. He does this by taking that typical response and applying it to the case of a
theoretical representative individual. Take a 48-year old man who says he feels as he did
when he was 36; at the age of 36, if he had made the same type of response that he does now,
he would have claimed to have felt as he did when he was 27; and so forth. This is an odd
turn of events. How did the author get from the group results to reapplying the typical
response over and over to a single person? As (A) says, the author projects from the survey
response to hypothetical responses made by a single individual; he looks at the responses the
individual would have made at an earlier age, and then another earlier age, and so on, and
uses that to show that the current response is ambiguous.
(B) The author never discusses what would have been the “most reasonable” thing for the
respondents to say.
(C) The example of the 48-year-old man isn’t used as a counterexample; it doesn’t show that
people really didn’t “almost unanimously” respond by saying that they felt 75% of their
real age. Instead, the example is used to show that the response, which the author never
doubts, is inherently ambiguous.
(D) The author doesn’t set up two opposed statements in direct contradiction of each other
and force us to choose one or the other; he’s simply interested in showing that it’s difficult
to understand what one statement means.
(E) The author never speaks of “manipulation” on the part of the questioners.
• In order to understand the author’s “techniques of reasoning,” you’ve got to
understand what purpose the reasoning is intended to serve; i.e. what the author is
trying to prove. Here the author’s purpose is stated in the third sentence: he wants to
show there’s a problem in understanding the response. The hypothetical case of the
Incredible Regressing Man is intended to show that.
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SECTION III:
LOGICAL REASONING
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
1. (B)
The stimulus begins with a claim made by Shakespeare-philes, who feel that in England, at
least, Shakespeare’s work has been known and loved by all classes, not just the elite. The
key phrase comes midway: “Skepticism about this claim is borne out by. . . .” This
indicates that the author’s main point is to take issue with that claim. Meanwhile, the
counterevidence comes from only one period and source, the bound copies of
Shakespeare from the early 1800’s that the author feels could not have been available to
ordinary folk. So (B) is correct in taking issue with the original claim, and has an
appropriately narrow scope (“at some time in the past”).
(A) The issue here is ‘Who historically has revered Shakespeare (the elite or all classes?),’
and not ‘How can you tell the elite apart from everyone else?’
(C) What aspects? What lack of appreciation today?
(D) goes too far. The evidence, as noted above, comes only from the 1800’s. The author
cannot be leading to a blanket statement that only the educated upper class has ever known
and loved Shakespeare.
(E) It’s not the elite who are skeptical but the author, and that skepticism is of the claim
made in sentence 1, not of whether Shakespeare in fact wrote worthy plays.
• The main point or conclusion must follow logically from the given evidence. Pay
close attention to the topic and scope in hacking your way through the answer
choices.
• Don’t confuse the author’s attitude (in this case, skepticism) for the attitude of a
character or group that appears in the stimulus.
2. (E)
Even if only the educated rich of the early 1800’s could own and peruse the books that the
author cites, who’s to say that everybody else couldn’t have known, studied, and loved
Shakespeare by seeing his plays performed? The unwarranted assumption that people
could only get to know Shakespeare’s plays in book form drives a stake through the heart
of the logic.
(A),(B) The conclusion drawn, which lest we forget is (B) in Question 1, isn’t aesthetic—
“literary quality,” to quote choice (A)—but sociological, on the topic of ‘Who has always
revered Shakespeare?’ And contrary to (B), the evidence isn’t “purely economic”—it
connects money to awareness of Shakespeare.
(C) is way off. No 20th century standards are cited, and it’s not 18th century events that are
being judged or evaluated but a contemporary claim about the nature of Shakespeare’s
perennial fans.
(D), like (A) and (B), misunderstands the argument as an attempt to judge literary quality.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
• Often when a stimulus generates two questions, the second is easier than the first
and should be attempted first. In this case, however, figuring out the author’s point
(Q. 1) was almost certainly a prerequisite for determining the reasoning flaw (Q. 2). In
future, survey both questions instead of making a knee-jerk decision as to which to
tackle first.
3. (C)
If you recognize the president’s subtle but definite scope shift, you can knock this question
off in a jiffy. All the evidence shows is that the material used in the mailings is recycled. But
the conclusion is that the mailings are recyclable—which is different. The president must
be assuming that that which has been recycled can be recycled again.
(A) The conclusion deals with the recyclability of the mailings only. Paper put to other
use is outside the scope.
(B) The Kaplan “Denial Test” shows you why (B) is wrong. Suppose for the moment that
(B) is false: Suppose some of the group’s mailings lack windows. Would that new fact
affect the argument? Not a bit; the mailing materials could still be completely recyclable. In
contrast, note that if (C) is false—if the window material isn’t recyclable—then the
argument falls apart.
(D) As anyone who has discarded newspapers or cans in the normal trash will attest, that
which is recyclable isn’t always recycled! The issue here is recyclability, which has nothing
to do with what actually happens to the mailings when they arrive at people’s homes.
(E) The conclusion concerns only “these mailings”—the ones sent from HQ. That other
mailings may or may not be sent from elsewhere is beside the point.
• Remember the Kaplan “Denial Test”: The test of a necessary assumption is that if the
statement is denied or proven false, the argument suffers damage.
• Always be on the lookout for scope shifts. They don’t only occur in arguments that
we’re explicitly told are flawed. They can be committed any time, by any arguer.
4. (A)
The first line of attack is to mentally rewrite the first sentence. (And paraphrasing a key
idea is always smart anyway.) If that “frequently expressed view. . . is false,” it must mean
that, to the author, written constitutions are inherently no more liberal than, and may be
even less liberal than, unwritten ones. Which is all (A) is saying. Notice that the actual
“therefore” sentence, the one you expect to be the conclusion, does in fact simply echo
sentence 1: It asserts a condition (liberal interpretation and application) that’s necessary for
a written constitution to become liberal, in contrast to the view that a written constitution is
per se liberal.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
(B) screws up the phrase “properly understood.” The author uses it in sentence 3 to
introduce her view of what a constitution should be properly understood to be—namely, a
sum of procedures. But (B) crazily implies that one cannot properly understand a written
constitution. Huh?
(C), besides making no sense (how could it be easier to misinterpret a written document
than a set of concepts that are mental or verbal only?), falls into much the same trap as (B),
by implying that the issue is how a constitution can be understood or interpreted, when
the issue is, in fact, How liberal per se, is a written constitution?
(D) The preservation of constitutions is never mentioned or alluded to.
(E) There probably are criteria for evaluating how a constitution is to be interpreted and
applied, but the author never gets into that. What she’s presenting, in the last sentence, are
criteria for deeming a constitution as “liberal.”
• As noted above, paraphrasing an author’s key ideas is always smart.
• Don’t be surprised when the author seems to state her conclusion twice—once at the
outset and once at the end, albeit in slightly different words. This is a common tactic
in argument and debate. The LSAT writers want to see whether you recognize the
repetition or mistake the two sentences for unrelated thoughts.
5. (B)
Sentence 2, by itself, yields the correct answer. (B)’s sentiment, that one cannot evaluate the
liberalness of a written constitution from the writing alone, directly follows from sentence
2’s assertion that words have to be put into effect or practice before they can be assessed.
(A) contradicts both (B) and the text. By the author’s definition, a paper with words on it is
meaningless until those words get turned into action.
(C) makes little sense (it has to be somewhat handy to have a written constitution to consult
from time to time), and shifts the scope by implying that the issue is which type of
constitution is preferable, when it’s really about which one is inherently more liberal.
(D) reflects a faulty paraphrase of sentence 1, and if you picked (D) please read and follow
this explanation carefully. To state, as the author does, that it’s false that written
constitutions must be more liberal than unwritten ones, doesn’t mean that the reverse is
true—that unwritten ones must be more liberal than written ones. As noted in the
explanation to Question 4, all we can assume is that written ones don’t have an edge when it
comes to liberalness. In fact, as we see from the argument as a whole, the author believes
that neither type of constitution is inherently more liberal than the other; it all depends on
how a constitution is interpreted and applied.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
(E), besides leaving out the issue of application (which is coequal with interpretation in the
argument), commits the common error of mistaking a necessary condition for a sufficient
one. Note that Keyword “only”! Just because a constitution is interpreted and applied
liberally doesn’t make it liberal—there may be other requirements that need to be met
before a constitution is deemed to be a liberal one.
• Don’t take the question stem to mean that you have to combine all the stimulus
statements in order to come up with the right answer. More often than not, the
correct inference either follows from one sentence (as it does here), or can be derived
by combining two sentences.
• You may have left this argument and its two questions successfully, and still not
known exactly what the author means by a “liberal constitution.” Who cares? Full
comprehension of the content is less important than full command of the purpose
and structure.
6. (E)
The author recommends that scientists focus on Earth-like planets and carbon-based life
when estimating the probability of life on other planets, even though there could well be
non-carbon-based life on planets unlike ours. How come? Because all known life forms are
carbon-based, and only Earth, to our knowledge, supports life. So the author is
suggesting—for whatever reason—that we’re wisest to use what we do know in order to
make reliable predictions about what we don’t. Only (E) explicitly evokes this idea of
“concentrate on the known.”
(A), as a principle, would support a recommendation that we not make use of observed
phenomena when making inferences about unobserved phenomena. This is pretty much
the antithesis of the author’s point of view.
(B) sets up a contrast—explaining all phenomena vs. explaining some phenomena—that has
no connection to the stimulus whatsoever.
(C), like (A), goes against the text. The author isn’t opposed to making estimates about
extraterrestrial life, as is the principle in (C); she’s simply in favor of basing those estimates
on known rather than unknown factors.
(D) may sound impressive, but is no closer to the text than (B) is. The author is in no sense
talking about “explaining phenomena,” and has nothing to say about reliance on a few
principles vs. reliance on many.
• Some LR arguments focus on scientific issues and terminology. If you’re
uncomfortable with them, remember our advice about science passages in Reading
Comp.: Don’t even try to read like a scientist. Deliberately “dumb down” your
reading: Paraphrase loosely, concentrate on the overall thrust of the text, and don’t
get bogged down in details. Here, if you simply isolate the topic and scope as “how
to estimate the likelihood of alien life,” (E) would have to jump out as the only choice
that even comes close.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
7. (B)
The politician begins by citing the need for the redistribution of wealth, without which
economic injustices will flourish. He then predicts that such injustice, if it peaks, will turn
those who are suffering to violence. Finally, he asserts that the nation must do whatever it
can to alleviate problems—inferably including the economic injustice just described—that
would otherwise lead to violence. So the implicit point must be: We had better
redistribute wealth, choice (B), lest the chain of causation just described come to pass.
(A) Though the politician believes that violence is inevitable result of intolerant injustice,
and probably believes that that is regrettable, his purpose is neither to justify nor to
condemn—his purpose is to recommend a course of action that will avoid a lot of
escalating problems.
(C) This can’t be the politician’s conclusion because no evidence to this effect is provided;
the topic is economic justice. In any event, he apparently believes that decisions should be
based on practical realities and not on either of the grounds that (C) mentions.
(D) Actually, his point is that economic injustice had better be remedied in order to
prevent intolerable social conditions that he believes are an inevitable consequence of its
continuation.
(E), like (E) in Question 5, mistakes a necessary condition for a sufficient one. “Unless” is a
Keyword signaling necessity. Redistributing wealth may not bring about economic justice,
but without it, violence is inevitable.
• Inferences and conclusions share a key characteristic with assumptions: They must
be true in order for the argument to work. Maintain a high standard of truth for
answer choices in all three question types.
• Make sure you fully understand the logic inherent in the word “unless.” In the
statement “Unless X (redistribute wealth), then Y (economic injustice)”, the X element
is necessary to avoid the Y element. That doesn’t mean that X is sufficient, by itself,
for Y to be avoided; once again, there may be other factors involved. Think of the
specifics in this example in common sense terms: If the nation doesn’t redistribute
the wealth, then there will definitely continue to be economic injustice. If the nation
does redistribute the wealth, then that requirement is satisfied, and it’s possible to
alleviate the economic injustice, but by no means is it a sure thing.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
8. (A)
The data aren’t presented in the most helpful order. You might have tried to rearrange the
facts chronologically, and made a mental picture of the situation, too: In 1985, they found
38 of these beetles in a time span of two hours, while in 1989, in the same place, they only
found 10 in nine hours. Those data might suggest a decline in the beetle population over
those four years, but no: The author’s conclusion is that there probably was no drop because
(Evidence Keyword) ‘85 was wet and ‘89 was dry. Sentence 1 tells us that these normally
motionless beetles move around more in wet years. What’s the connection between this fact
and the data presented? The implication is that in 1989, despite what the observer reported,
there were pretty much the same number of beetles in that spot, but they weren’t moving as
much so they couldn’t be seen. (A) supports the argument by shoring up this
implication—to escape the gaze of the observer the beetles would have to be pretty darned
invisible when motionless. It makes more plausible the notion that the observer missed
approximately 28 additional beetles that were actually there in 1989.
(B) doesn’t necessarily describe the environment at which the observer was conducting the
study, and in any case, other beetle habitats are outside the scope of this argument, which
concerns one locale only.
(C) mentions reproduction in the expectation that you’ll connect it with the issue at hand,
which you shouldn’t: A comparison of the number of beetles in two separate years has
nothing directly to do with reproduction activity. But even if they were connected, (C)’s
suggestion that beetle movement relates to reproduction activity would weaken the
author’s logic, because it would link the dry weather in 1989 to less frequent reproduction
and hence support the idea of a 1989 population drop.
(D) Useless background information: So they’re rare, so what? The fact remains that some
were observed in 1985 and fewer in 1989, and the issue is the explanation for that decrease.
(D)’s historical note is at most of footnote interest only.
(E) The reference to predators is tempting, if only because eaten beetles are nonexistent
beetles, but it’s a dead end. If predators are relevant in this context, then why would they
be any more or less relevant in 1989 than 1985? (E) completely ignores the essential time
comparison at the heart of the logic, so although you may feel that it raises a potentially
relevant element, it can’t possibly strengthen the reasoning.
• One element of paraphrasing that you may want to develop, is to rearrange an
argument’s pieces of evidence so that you can better see the chain of logic or the
chronology at work. Take some simple shorthand notes if it helps you—
remembering to keep all scratchwork in the test booklet, of course.
• Don’t fall for tempting choices that appear to lead in a plausible direction, but
ultimately require an extra leap of faith. The issues of reproductive behavior (C) and
predators (E) may seem relevant at first glance, because these things can impact on
beetle population, but without more information and a stronger connection to the
author’s conclusion, they fall short.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
9. (B)
In concluding that raising blood-magnesium levels can cure fatigue, the author interprets
the observed correlations between fatigue (especially fatigue involved in chronic fatigue
syndrome) and low levels of blood magnesium as indicating that the low levels of
magnesium caused the fatigue. But he hasn’t shown this to be the case. As (B) points out, it’s
quite possible that it’s fatigue that causes lower concentrations of magnesium in the blood.
If that were the case, raising the level of blood magnesium would simply attack a result of
fatigue, not the cause, and would be unlikely to effect a cure.
(A) The argument doesn’t rely on the claim that malabsorption of magnesium is always the
cause of low blood magnesium; the only causal link that plays a role in the conclusion is
the link between low blood magnesium and fatigue.
(C)’s possibility is irrelevant; the fact that there is some variation in magnesium levels
among healthy people wouldn’t challenge the author’s belief that raising the levels of
blood magnesium would cure the fatigue associated with the syndrome.
(D) and (E) both criticize the author for not being specific enough, but there’s no reason he
should be specific. He’s discussing in the most general terms what sort of treatment would
cure chronic fatigue; he’s not writing out a prescription. Since his conclusion is general, he
needn’t do the things discussed in (D) and (E).
• The mistaking of a correlation for a causal relationship is one of the most common
logical flaws tested on the LSAT; as soon as you read “is invariably associated with,”
you should have expected the author to make this mistake.
• There are some traditional ways that the correct answer exposes the
correlation/causation flaw: Sometimes it names a third unsuspected cause for both
conditions; sometimes it points out that the causation may run the other way, as (B)
does here.
• The second sentence, about the general correlation between malabsorption of
magnesium into the blood and other types of fatigue, provides supporting
background information, but is not really central to the conclusion; any choice that
dwells on “the absorption of magnesium into the bloodstream” is missing the point.
10. (B)
The consumer advocate argues that explicit safety labels should be required for toys
because it would enable parents to be more effective in preventing toy-related injuries; the
labels currently required, “age-range” labels, don’t do enough to reduce such injuries. (B)
strengthens this argument by confirming the advocate’s claim that age-range labels and
safety labels have a different effect on parents. To take the author’s own example, when
parents see that a toy is recommended for ages three and up, they take this to mean that
younger children won’t understand or enjoy the toy; they don’t realize that it might mean
that the toy is dangerous for children younger than three. If the label specifically warned
that the toy can be dangerous, parents would presumably be doubly careful that it not fall
into their young children’s hands.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
(A) says some toys aren’t dangerous; this doesn’t show the need for requiring safety labels
for dangerous toys.
(C) doesn’t strengthen the advocate’s argument because the advocate wasn’t specifically
interested in the case of children under three; rather, she was trying to demonstrate that
safety labels are more effective than age-range labels in preventing toy-related injuries for
children of any age.
(D) suggests that safety labels wouldn’t be very effective in reducing injuries, or at least
injuries to those children whose parents don’t read labels.
(E) focuses on a particular hazard, but the advocate was speaking of toy-related injuries in
general; she never said that safety labels would be especially effective in preventing
choking.
• Beware of choices that focus on the author’s example. Most such choices simply seize
on an irrelevant aspect of the example and give it undeserved importance. The
example of the “three and up” label is merely meant to explain what the advocate
means by “age-range” labels; it’s explanatory, and hence very unlikely to be involved
in a strengthener.
11. (C)
The whole stimulus is intended to prove the initial statement that the toy-labeling law
should require explicit safety labels; the rest of the stimulus—the explanation of what toylabeling laws currently require and why the proposed change would be an
improvement—is intended to support that statement. Clearly, the statement in question is
the argument’s conclusion.
(A) As we’ve already said, the statement isn’t used to support a further conclusion, the
statement is the conclusion.
(B) There are no “conflicting” goals discussed, and the statement isn’t a compromise;
instead, it’s the single goal for which the advocate argues throughout the stimulus.
(D) Huh?! Obviously, the advocate never attempts to refute her own conclusion!
(E) The statement isn’t a “particular instance,” it is itself the general principle under
discussion; the only particular instance discussed is the “three and up” label, and that’s an
instance of age-range labeling.
• This argument reminds you that the conclusion can come anywhere in the argument.
• Every once in a while you get a gift. That’s why you should look at every question on
each section. That’s also why you should always look at both questions on a doublequestion set, even if you can’t answer the first; sometimes one of the questions is
much easier than the other.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
12. (E)
The author says that organic farming leaves less land available to serve as habitat for local
wildlife than chemical farming leaves, because organic farming requires that more acreage
be cultivated in order to produce the same amount of food. The author reasons that the
more acreage cultivated by farmers, the less land is left as habitat for local wildlife. He
must be assuming, as (E) says, that the land cultivated as acreage by organic farmers can no
longer serve as a habitat for wildlife; otherwise, the increase in land cultivated wouldn’t
constitute a loss of wildlife habitat.
(A) The author hasn’t discussed the health threat posed by chemical farming at all; for all
we know he accepts the argument that chemical farming threatens the health of wildlife.
He’s merely making the counterpoint that organic farming also has a drawback as far as
wildlife is concerned.
(B) is similar to (A); the author doesn’t imply or assume anything about whether or not
chemicals cause harm to wildlife. His only point is that organic farming cultivates a wider
area, and thus reduces wildlife habitat.
(C) The author is only interested in the effects that the two farming methods have on
wildlife, so he needn’t assume anything about their other disadvantages.
(D) The author compared the acreage needed for total food production; he doesn’t get into
what type of crops are being produced, so he doesn’t really need to assume anything about
that.
• Keep the scope of the conclusion in mind. The conclusion only concerns the
comparative amount of wildlife habitat left by the two methods. The author needn’t
assume anything about any other aspects of the two methods.
• A tricky type of wrong answer choice is one that introduces a distinction the author
doesn’t make, like (D). If the distinction doesn’t play a role in drawing the
conclusion, it probably doesn’t play a role in any assumption. Our author doesn’t
discuss what type of crops are grown; his argument is made in terms of “amount of
food” and doesn’t require that the two methods of growing crops are equally fitted to
growing the exact same crops.
13. (A)
The stimulus is pretty simple: Reptiles have these characteristics, therefore alligators—
which we have to know or at least accept as being reptiles—have ‘em, too. In the same way,
(A) argues that whatever’s true about green plants must be true about grass (which is a
subset of green plants).
(B) “Some red butterflies” is more limited than the stimulus’ “[all] reptiles,” and one red
butterfly is not a class or subset of a larger group, as alligators are of reptiles or grass is of
green plants.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
(C) would be parallel if it read, “All books provide knowledge about the empirical world,
so Woolf’s book does likewise.” But as (C) is written, that books can provide such
knowledge does not imply that each individual book does so.
(D) The Ali film is not a subset of Fassbinder films, it’s one particular example. To be
parallel, (D) might have read something like this: “All members of the Hanbury family
have seen all of Fassbinder’s films, so Dierdre Hanbury has seen all of his films.” Note that
there the author would be assuming that Dierdre is a member of that family, just as our
original assumes (or knows) that alligators are reptiles.
(E) features two separate terms—running a risk and suffering a broken bone—in a way that
the stimulus doesn’t. (E) would be closer if it read “Skiers run a high risk, so skier Lindsay
runs a high risk.”
• Students often wonder about the difference between matters of “common
knowledge,” which you’re expected to have and use on the LSAT, and matters of
“outside knowledge,” which you’re not. Question 13 is interesting in this regard. You
need to know (or at least to accept without a qualm the author’s belief), that alligators
are a subset of reptiles and grass is a subset of green plants in order to wade through
this question without mishap. This is more detailed knowledge than the LSAT
usually calls for, and it may be that those examinees who complained about this
question in June of 1995 had a legitimate beef. On the other hand, none of the other
choices features any kind of a subset relationship in the same way as the original
and (A), so it’s probably something we’re supposed to swallow without comment.
(And don’t even get started on the speculation that some other colors of grass might
not qualify as “green plants”..!)
14. (C)
The author is trying to establish that waste of taxpayer dollars occurs at weaponsproducing plants. As proof, he cites the fact that the government has decided to reopen a
plant and allow it to violate environmental, health and safety laws, when it could just as
easily produce the weapons at a safer facility. Didn’t something get lost in the shuffle?
What happened to taxpayer dollars? What does compliance with safety laws have to do
with wasting money? As (C) says, the evidence doesn’t address the issue of wasting
taxpayer money, which is the subject of the argument’s conclusion.
(A) The main problem with the reasoning isn’t that the author hasn’t backed up the claim
that the alternative site is safer, but that the issue of safety isn’t even the issue that the
author set out to address.
(B) The author’s point that weapons laboratories are money wasters doesn’t undermine his
claim that production plants are also money wasters.
(D)’s distinction between “research” and “weapons” is confusing; the research spoken of in
the argument is weapons research. The argument makes a distinction between weapons
research and weapons productions, and never confuses the two.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
(E) The argument never compares research laboratories to production plants except to say
that they both waste taxpayer money; they don’t have to be similar to be compared in that
respect.
• This is another example of an argument with different terms in the evidence and the
conclusion. If your evidence is about compliance with health and safety laws, your
conclusion can’t be about wasting money. Don’t let the author off the hook! Don’t
figure: “Well, violating safety laws will lose money in the long run because ... “
That’s an argument in itself, and it’s an argument the author doesn’t make.
15. (B)
Dr. Godfrey notices that the more students work at their part time jobs, the worse they tend
to do in school; he concludes that they’re doing badly because they’re working long hours.
Dr. Nash also sees the correlation between part-time work and poor grades, but she draws
the opposite conclusion; she believes the students who work long hours do so because
they’re doing poorly in school. As (B) says, she offers an alternative interpretation for the
association noticed by Godfrey.
(A) Dr. Nash disagrees with Dr. Godfrey’s claim that part-time work contributes to
students’ academic problems; she never denies that those problems are serious.
(C) Dr. Nash accepts the accuracy of Dr. Godfrey’s evidence—i.e., she accepts that there is
a correlation between students working long hours part time and doing poorly in school.
(D) Neither Dr. Nash nor Dr. Godfrey discusses the general question of whether schools
are at fault for students’ academic problems; they discuss the much more narrow problem
of whether the school policy of allowing part-time work has contributed to students’
academic problems.
(E) Dr. Nash believes that there is a relationship between students’ academic problems and
part-time employment, just not the relationship that Dr. Godfrey espouses.
• This is yet another variation on the old correlation-for-causation-trick, as Maxwell
Smart might say. The evidence gives a correlation between A and B; Godfrey
concludes that A causes B; Nash disagrees, and concludes that B causes A. When
you start recognizing this trick, such questions become a snap to answer.
16. (C)
Since Dr. Godfrey says that students are having academic problems as a result of working
long hours, and Dr. Nash says students are working long hours because they have
academic problems, it would be nice to see which came first: the poor academic
performance or the long work hours. As (C) says, if we could look at the students in
question and see whether they had academic problems before they started working, we’d be
in a better position to know whether the work could have caused their problems.
(Obviously, if the problems came before work, the work didn’t cause the problems).
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(A) Neither Dr. Nash nor Dr. Godfrey said anything about the connection between
academic problems and future career success, so this question is irrelevant.
(B) Whether or not students also spend long hours at other activities doesn’t matter. Both
disputants accept that there’s a connection between working long hours and doing poorly
in school; they only disagree about which condition causes the other, and (B) wouldn’t
help clear that up.
(D) hints at some undescribed skullduggery, but doesn’t address the question of whether
they’re getting poor grades because they’re working a lot or vice versa.
(E), like (A), speaks of what happens after high-school; neither speaker says anything about
this, so the answer to the question posed in (E) wouldn’t help resolve the dispute.
• Take the time to unpack the question stem. You’re looking for a question whose
answer would help you chose between Godfrey’s conclusion and Nash’s conclusion
(This has some similarities to Section 1, Question 22). You can double-check a choice
by answering the question “yes” or “no” and seeing if it has an effect on the
disagreement.
• It’s important not only to know what the disputants disagree about, but also what
they agree about, and what they don’t say anything about. Questions that center on
the latter two areas are irrelevant.
17. (A)
X reasons that there is an “inevitable” trade-off between human and animal welfare in
medical research and that concern for human welfare should prevail. Y responds by
proposing an alternative way to conduct medical research. Y does not believe that the only
way to conduct medical research is on animals or humans. Y suggests that research being
done on animals could be done in some other way (e.g., computer modeling), without
causing any suffering to animals or to humans. Y rejects X’s claim that there must be a
“trade-off” between human and animal welfare; or, as (A) says, Y contradicts a premise
(that there must be an inevitable trade-off) on which X’s argument relies.
(B) Y does not disagree with X about the weight to be given to animal suffering as opposed
to human suffering. In fact, Y could even agree with X! If the only way to conduct medical
research involved humans and animals, Y may agree that human interests are more
important than animal interests. We just don’t know what Y believes about the relative
weight of human and animal interests because Y does not compare the two. All we know is
that Y doesn’t believe that there is an inevitable trade-off; Y believes that the same results
can be achieved by other means without animal suffering.
(C) Y’s argument doesn’t present a logical consequence of X’s premises; it contradicts X’s
argument by denying a premise on which X’s argument relies.
(D) Y disagrees with X’s argument; the new evidence about other types of research is
intended to refute X’s point.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
(E) Far from filling in a hole in X’s argument by supplying an assumption, or unstated
premise, Y attacks an explicitly stated premise.
• If you have trouble with this type of question or if you are pressed for time, at least
make sure you have a clear idea of how the second argument relates to the first:
Agreeing? Disagreeing? Clarifying or refining? Here Y definitely disagrees with X,
which means you can quickly strike out (E), (D), and also (C) which don’t disagree or
contradict X’s statement. This leaves a 50-50 chance of guessing correctly. Remember
that intelligent guessing on test day will increase your score.
18. (A)
Question 18 involves a scope shift. The evidence is that, in one particular environment,
some types of bacteria experienced random mutations. The conclusion is that all genetic
mutation is random. The credited response needs to link this specific example to the
general conclusion. Combine the stimulus with (A). The stimulus states that some genetic
mutations are random, and (A) states that either all mutations are random or none are. If
some mutations are random, then all mutations must be random; the alternative option
isn’t possible. If (A) is true, all genetic mutations are random, which is our conclusion.
(B) At best, (B) only mildly supports the idea that bacteria mutations occur randomly; it
doesn’t however support the conclusion that all genetic mutation is random.
(C) Since the stimulus doesn’t tell us that all genetic mutation in bacteria is random (it only
mentions certain kinds of bacteria), answer choice (C) doesn’t allow us to conclude
anything. (C)’s conclusion would only be true if all genetic mutations in bacteria were
random.
(D) indicates that the genetic mutations of these particular kinds of bacteria would be
random whatever their environment, but doesn’t get us any closer to drawing the
conclusion that all genetic mutation is random.
(E) too concentrates on the bacteria. (E) suggests that the experiment did a good job of
duplicating the bacteria’s behavior in nature, at least in some respects, but doesn’t allow us
to draw conclusions about all genetic mutations.
• Be on the lookout for cases in which the author shifts the scope from “some” to “all.”
The correct choice must move from specific evidence about some bacterial mutations
to a general conclusion about all mutations. (A) does this rather cleverly with a
general statement that says, in effect, that whatever is true of some mutations is true
of all mutations (at least as far as randomness goes).
• In an assumption question, any answer choice that does not link the evidence to the
conclusion (e.g., a choice in this question that never deals with anything beyond
bacteria) is clearly wrong. Eliminate these answer choices quickly (e.g., (B) and (E)).
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
19. (A)
According to the club rules, it’s necessary to be a member in good standing in order to
vote. However, that doesn’t mean that being a member in good standing automatically
entitles one to vote (is sufficient). Jeffrey is a member in good standing because he paid his
dues, but remember that being a member in good standing isn’t sufficient to guarantee he
gets to vote. The club president could have disallowed his vote for another reason. Thomas
makes the common mistake of confusing that which is necessary with that which is
sufficient. To use the terminology in (A): Thomas fails to take into account the distinction
between something not being prohibited (Jeffrey is not prohibited from voting because he
is a club member in good standing and only club members in good standing may vote)
and its being authorized (every member in good standing automatically gets to vote).
(B) Thomas never attacks the president’s character but does focus on the question of
Jeffrey’s eligibility to vote. Thus, neither part of (B) is correct.
(C) The only thing (C) could possibly be referring to is Thomas’ statement in the second
sentence “you’ve admitted that club rules say ...” But he’s not assuming that because
Althea didn’t deny what the club rules say that the club rules are true. He’s citing club
rules as independent evidence, and reminding his opponent that she’s already conceded
this point.
(D) is irrelevant. The question is whether the President had the right to prevent Jeffrey, a
member of good standing, from voting. Thomas doesn’t need to discuss what they were
voting about.
(E) is irrelevant. Thomas’ argument is about Jeffrey’s voting eligibility and doesn’t depend
on whether Althea is an authority on club rules. Thomas’ argument doesn’t improve if she
is an authority and isn’t weaker if she isn’t.
• Often the flaw in a necessary vs. sufficient argument is easy to detect, so the
testmakers make the question more difficult by using unexpected phrasing in the
credited response. Don’t be surprised if the correct choice is a little puzzling. Be
flexible in your approach to the choices; look for something that reflects the move
from necessary evidence to sufficient conclusion.
• Remember that you don’t always need to use everything in the stimulus to answer a
question. For instance, Althea’s reply simply serves as an illustration of Thomas’
flaw. You can use Althea’s hint but don’t feel you have to work it into your thinking;
if you can find the flaw easily without her help, that’s fine.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
20. (B)
People who consume calories beyond their proper weight-maintaining level normally
store fat and gain weight. But, people who regularly drink two or three alcoholic beverage
per day (a subset of all people) and exceed their weight-maintaining caloric intake usually
don’t gain weight. To resolve the discrepancy, we want the choice that most explains why
the general rule doesn’t apply to people who drink two to three alcoholic beverages a day.
According to (B), when people drink two or three alcoholic beverages a day, the excess
calories that they consume tend to be “dissipated” as heat; so (B) explains why they don’t
convert those excess calories into fat and gain weight.
(A) says that some people who drink don’t exceed their weight-maintaining caloric intake,
but we want to know about those drinkers who do exceed their weight-maintaining caloric
intake.
(C) talks about people who do not drink alcoholic beverages and therefore doesn’t explain
anything about people who do. Moreover, (C) doesn’t even speak of people who consume
calories beyond their weight-maintaining limit; (C) speaks of people who eat “high-calorie
foods,” a totally new idea.
(D) intensifies the mystery of the absence of weight gain in alcohol-drinkers without
explaining it.
(E) opens up a whole new question (fewer calories) to ponder, but doesn’t enlighten us as
to why the alcohol drinkers mentioned in the conclusion don’t put on the weight.
• The testmakers have to phrase stimuli carefully so as to avoid ambiguity as much as
possible. This can work to your advantage; if you notice an odd turn of phrase, you
can be fairly sure that the precise meaning of the phrase has something to do with
the answer. Pay special attention to little words that imply some logical connection
between two things, like “thereby” in the stimulus to 20.
21. (D)
The stimulus tells us that EEGs can “often, but not always” detect the abnormal electrical
signals associated with temporal lobe epilepsy. We’re given the first part of the conclusion:
In general, a positive EEG reading reliably indicates temporal lobe epilepsy. This
corresponds nicely to the fact that EEGs can “often” detect the signals associated with
epilepsy. But as the “although” indicates, the rest of the conclusion should correspond to
the other part of the evidence, the “not always.” So what can we conclude from the fact that
EEGs can’t always detect the abnormal electrical impulses? How about (D): a negative
reading—failure to pick up evidence of abnormal impulses—doesn’t necessarily mean that
temporal lobe epilepsy is not present.
(A) is absurd; a positive reading can’t “reasonably reliably” indicate two contradictory
things.
(B) The stimulus only discusses temporal lobe epilepsy, so it would be inappropriate to
introduce other forms of epilepsy in the conclusion.
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(C) The stimulus never mentions erroneous positive reading, only erroneous negative
ones. Therefore, the correct conclusion can’t compare the relative accuracy of positive vs.
negative readings.
(E) distorts the case; although a negative reading is not a sure indicator of the absence of
temporal lobe epilepsy, in no sense is a negative reading an indicator of the presence of
such epilepsy.
• Use Keywords. The “therefore” tells you that the last sentence is a conclusion. The
“although” tells you that the missing clause will be a counterbalance to the statement
about the reliability of positive readings. This should remind you of the other
occurrence of a counterbalance in the stimulus, in the phrase “often, but not always.”
22. (C)
The quickest way to solve this Parallel Reasoning problem is to consider the “flawed
reasoning” directly. The only way this conclusion must follow from the given evidence is
if there’s roughly the same number of bicyclists in both age groups, and that’s a fact we
can’t take for granted. If there are, for instance, 100 bicyclists 18+ and 1,000 bicyclists under
18, then 90 people with lights on their bikes would constitute a majority in the 18+
category, whereas 100 people with lights on their bikes in the under 18 category would not
constitute a majority of that group. In this way, we can take care of the evidence in the first
sentence and still show how it doesn’t necessarily lead to the conclusion in the second
sentence. So the nature of the flaw is a confusion of proportion with number. Scanning the
choices, only (C) qualifies, with voters taking the role of bicyclists 18+, non-voters standing
in for bicyclists under 18, and “being on the mailing list” the equivalent of “having lights
on their bikes.”
(A) In the original, the majority in one group possesses a trait while the majority of another
group does not. (A), however, gives us the majority in the same group—people in
Sheldon—possessing different traits (buying gas on Monday and groceries on Tuesday).
(B)’s conclusion is a statement of causation (“the availability of videos was responsible”),
which is nothing like the stimulus.
(D) can be rejected because its first piece of evidence is a statement about “every” member
of a group, and its conclusion evokes the concept of minimum (“must have at least two fire
trucks”), neither of which is present in the stimulus. Also, note that the concept that is
prevalent in both groups in the original, the aspect of majority, is only present in part in
(D).
(E), like (D), veers away from the stimulus with a piece of evidence about “everyone” in a
particular group. Also (E) involves two traits or behaviors, knitting and sewing, whereas
the stimulus involves only one: having a light on one’s bike.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
• Whenever the question stem announces the presence of a faulty argument, consider
investing a few seconds to see whether you can spot the flaw directly. Between the
argument at hand, and what you’ve learned about common LSAT logic flaws in your
Kaplan course, the flaw may jump out at you—as it might have done here. And then
you’re pretty much home free.
• When a conclusion is based on evidence about two separate groups, be on the
lookout for the “numbers vs. percentages” scope shift.
23. (E)
The author’s conclusion is that the government should not require removal of all asbestos
insulation because such removal disturbs asbestos, and when asbestos is disturbed it
becomes a health hazard. When left undisturbed, asbestos is harmless. (E) supports this
argument by suggesting a way in which asbestos removal may be worse for our health than
leaving the asbestos undisturbed. Not only does the initial removal pose a risk to our
health, but, according to (E), the removed asbestos remains a health hazard even after
removal due to the risk that it will be disturbed again, resulting in the same negative
consequences.
(A) The author is arguing that removing asbestos is more dangerous than leaving it
undisturbed; the fact that there are other things more dangerous than asbestos is irrelevant
to the argument and therefore doesn’t support it.
(B) doesn’t strengthen the argument because 1) we already know that the removal of
asbestos poses a health risk and 2) it implies that workers who wear their “required”
protective gear can avoid the health risk of asbestos (which would weaken the argument).
(C) makes an irrelevant distinction between types of asbestos which doesn’t strengthen or
weaken the author’s claim that it’s safer to leave asbestos alone (any kind of asbestos) than
to remove it.
(D) actually weakens the argument by suggesting that asbestos may be disturbed, and
consequently become a hazard, even if it is not deliberately removed; this weakens the
author’s idea that it’s safe not to remove asbestos. If (D) were true, it wouldn’t be possible
to leave asbestos undisturbed; renovations or building demolition would inevitably and
unintentionally disturb asbestos, thus posing a health risk even though the asbestos wasn’t
removed.
• Sometimes (but not often) the correct choice strengthens the argument in a stimulus
by adding new evidence that supports the conclusion. This type of answer is almost
impossible to pre-phrase, since you’re unlikely to guess what new information
they’ll introduce. However, you can most easily recognize useful new evidence if you
have a clear idea of how the author draws her conclusion. For instance, in this
question, you might summarize the argument as follows: It’s bad to remove asbestos,
because removing asbestos causes disturbance and disturbance is bad. (E) mentions
additional disturbance and thus should ring a bell.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
24. (C)
In a somewhat unusual argumentative structure (at least by LSAT standards), the author
draws two conclusions, both clearly marked by Keywords. The stem in 24 alerts us to the
relevant conclusion for this one, namely: “Therefore, . . . the direction of the Earth’s
magnetic field has changed over time.” The evidence for this conclusion is presented in the
first two sentences: The direction of magnetization in solidified lava reflects the direction
of the Earth’s magnetic field at the time the lava solidifies, and there are major differences
in this magnetization direction among solidified lava flows formed throughout the Earth’s
history. To show that this proves that the direction of the Earth’s magnetic field has
changed over time, the author must assume that once lava has solidified, the direction of
its magnetization is permanently fixed. If not—that is, if the direction of magnetization in
solidified lava can change unpredictably—then there’s no way that the differing
magnetization directions documented in the evidence supports the notion that the Earth’s
magnetic field has changed over time. The author must assume (C); otherwise, the
differences noted could be the result of unpredictable changes within the solidified lava
flows, not changes in the Earth’s magnetic field at the time these lava flows were formed.
(A) The author doesn’t state that only lava can be used to measure the Earth’s magnetic
direction, merely that it can be. Apply the Kaplan Denial Test: The argument doesn’t fall
apart if other things besides lava can reflect the Earth’s magnetic field direction as it existed
in the past, which confirms that (A) is not a necessary assumption.
(B) fails to mention magnetization at all! Both the evidence and conclusion deal with
magnetization, so any key assumption must include this concept. Instead, (B) introduces
the irrelevant concept of “consistencies.”
(D) includes an irrelevant comparison and, like (B), fails to mention magnetization. Apply
the Kaplan Denial Test and it will become readily apparent that (D) is not a necessary
assumption.
(E) is outside the scope of the argument. Magnetized rocks? Hopefully, you dismissed this
answer choice quickly.
• Not everything an author presents is relevant to the question asked. Use your critical
reading skills to evaluate the importance of the information presented. You can still
answer Question 24 even if you remove the entire last sentence of the stimulus! Don’t
get bogged down.
• Remember that the Kaplan 4-Step Approach to Logical Reasoning suggests that you
move directly to the answer choices if you are unable to pre-phrase an answer.
Process of elimination works very well for this question because of the common
wrong answer types that appear.
• Learn to recognize the distortion common wrong answer type (as exhibited in choice
(A)) so that you can dismiss these choices quickly on test day.
• (D) is another common wrong answer choice that appears on the exam; the irrelevant
comparison / distinction. Learn to recognize it and to eliminate it and you will garner
more points in less time on test day.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
25. (D)
Now we’re asked to weaken the author’s second conclusion (see the discussion for Question
24 above). The author argues that lava flows that differ in age by several thousand years
have roughly the same magnetic direction, but that lava flows that differ in age by much
more time (hundreds of thousands or even millions of years) have different magnetic
directions. Therefore, the author concludes, the Earth’s magnetic field changes slowly. Any
answer choice that weakens this argument must undermine the connection between the
slow passage of time and the slow change in direction. Choice (D), which states that the
magnetic direction of lava can change rapidly (e.g., within two weeks of a single flow’s
solidification) undermines the argument that the Earth’s magnetic field, as represented by
lava, changes slowly.
(A) doesn’t link the magnetic direction of lava to the Earth’s magnetic direction. It
introduces the irrelevant idea of “iron-containing liquids.” Besides, who cares how the
magnetic direction changes? The issue is whether it changes and how fast. Hopefully you
dismissed (A) quickly as outside the scope of the argument.
(B) introduces useless background information. What’s happened since scientists began
measuring these magnetic directions in no way damages the link between the author’s
evidence about the observation of past lava flows and the conclusion drawn from it.
(C) is consistent with the idea that the change occurred slowly (several time in a few million
years). Remember that we want to weaken the argument.
(E) fails to mention magnetic direction at all, and instead focuses on an irrelevant aspect of
the solidification process.
• Process of elimination can be a great strategy, especially in tough questions. If the
correct answer is eluding you, focus on throwing out the ones that are obviously
wrong; i.e., the ones that correspond to Kaplan’s list of common wrong answer
choices.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section III
26. (E)
The key here is to notice that each statement is versed in formal logic. The tricky thing is
that the testmakers make use of equivalent phrases along the way. For example, “fall more
slowly” = “fall less rapidly.” It’s up to you to make the logical connection when it comes to
different ways of saying the same thing. In short, it all comes back to critical reading.
So here’s the argument: If X (slower to adopt new tech than competitors), then Y (prod
costs fall more slowly than competitors). But if Y (prod costs fall less rapidly = prod costs
fall more slowly), then Z (prices fall less rapidly). Choice (E) can be derived from using the
contrapositive on both of these statements: If NOT Z (prices fall AS or more rapidly as
competitors), then NOT Y (prod costs fall AS or more rapidly). Continuing back to the first
statement, if NOT Y (prod costs fall AS rapidly), then NOT X (not slower to adopt new tech
= as fast as competitors to adopt new tech). Put it together, it adds up to (E).
(A) The concept of “raising prices” is never mentioned in the original stimulus and is not
the opposite of “not lowering prices as rapidly.” The latter will definitely result in a
country being squeezed out of the global market. As for a consequence of the former
(raising prices), we can’t infer a thing.
(B) Adopting technology slower than competitors will lead to being squeezed from the
global market, but the author never states that this is the only way a company can be
squeezed from the global market. There may be other ways a competitor gets squeezed
from the global market (e.g., political instability in a country) that don’t involve
technology. In other words, adopting technology slower than competitors is sufficient for
being squeezed out of the global market, but we can’t infer, as (B) does, that it’s a necessary
condition.
(C) Did you catch the scope shift in this one? The mere adoption of new manufacturing
techniques is not the issue; it’s whether a country’s manufacturers’ adoption of said
techniques (or technology) is faster or slower than that of its foreign competitors. (C) fails
to compare how quickly the different countries adopt technology, and is thus not
inferable.
(D) As seen above in (B), it’s possible for a group to be squeezed out of the market for a
reason other than differences in the rate of technological adoption.
• If you aren’t making progress on a tough question at the end of a section, your best
strategy may be to guess on it and devote the remaining time to revisiting other
possibly easier questions you skipped earlier.
• When taking the contrapositive of a statement, be very careful when negating the
various terms in the statements. For instance, the opposite of “slower to adopt
technology” is not “faster to adopt technology;” the opposite is “NOT slower to
adopt technology.” Do you see the difference? This leaves open the possibility that
the two countries adopt technology at the same rate, or as stated in the correct
choice, “as rapidly as.” This may seem like a minor difference, but understanding
this will help you see eye to eye with the correct choice.
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SECTION IV
LOGIC GAMES
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
GAME 1 — Student Speeches
(Q. 1-6)
The Action: Here’s a fairly standard sequencing game in which we’re asked to order the
speeches given by six students—H, J, K, R, S, and T. The Key Issues will involve our
typical sequencing concerns:
1) Which speech is given in what time slot?
2) Which speeches can, must, or cannot be given before what other speeches?
3) Which speeches can, must, or cannot be given after what other speeches?
The Initial Setup: There are six speeches, so let’s write 1 through 6 across the page. (You’d
probably do exactly that if, in real life, you had to keep track of the students’ speeches.)
Remember to list the students off to the side:
HJKRST
1 2 3 4 5 6
The Rules:
1) This rule is tough to symbolize, but think it through and jot it down as best you can.
We’re told that the speeches given by H, J, and K can’t all be given consecutively. “NO
HJK” is fine for shorthand, as long as you remember that these three entities can’t be
consecutive in any order. For example, KHJ and JKH would violate this rule too.
2) Likewise, the speeches given by R, S, and T can’t be consecutive. “NO RST” will suffice
as long as you realize that this rule has the same implications as Rule 1.
3) H’s speech is before S’s, so right away we know that H can’t go 6th and S can’t go 1st.
You could include these implications in your master sketch, but they should be
obvious enough that you need not even add them in. The important thing is to get the
rule down, so let’s shorthand it as “H . . . S.”
4) “NO J” over the 1 and 6 should do it for this rule.
5) T’s speech can’t be given consecutively with J’s speech. Let’s write “NO TJ or JT.”
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
Key Deductions: See The Big Picture.
The Final Visualization: Here’s our master sketch and rules:
HJKRST
No HJK
No RST
H…S
No TJ or JT
No J
No J
1 2 3 4 5 6
The Big Picture:
• Some games simply don’t have any earth-shattering Key Deductions. While you
should always attempt to combine the rules and seek out Key Deductions, you need
to be able to recognize when a game is left fairly “wide open” as is the case here. In
such cases, don’t knock your head against the wall—if you don’t see anything, save
valuable time by moving on to the questions.
• Even when there are no major Key Deductions, don’t assume that there’s nothing of
importance to notice about the game before moving on to the questions. Remember,
not all entities are created equal. To identify the most important entity, look for the
one that appears in the most rules. Here, J is in two of the rules, and the game tends
to hinge on the placement of this entity. J can’t be in 1 or 6 (Rule 4), and J is also
prohibited from being next to T (Rule 5). Some of the questions are bound to be
answered by T’s location limiting the possibilities for J’s placement. Whether
directly or indirectly, the restrictions placed on J, including J’s relation to T, will lead
you to the answer in quite a few of this game’s questions.
• Think before you draw. Make sure you understand what a rule says before you even
make a stab at symbolizing it. In order to successfully master this game, you had to
fully think through the implications of Rules 1 and 2 before putting pencil to paper.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
The Questions:
1. (D)
Use Kaplan’s technique for acceptability questions to blow through this one in ten seconds.
Compare each rule to each choice, and cross off any choice in violation of any rule. Rule 2
is violated by (A). Rule 3 lets us axe (E). Rule 4 eliminates (B), and Rule 5 does away with
(C) leaving us with (D).
• “Acceptability” questions are not only easy, but they also can help to clarify your
conception of the game.
2. (B)
With T in 3, J can’t go in 2 or 4 (Rule 5). And J can’t be in 1 or 6 (Rule 4), so the only space
left for J is 5, choice (B).
(A), (C), (D), and (E) all could be true, but none must be true.
• Ask yourself the important questions. After placing T, the first thought in your
mind should have been, “how does this affect the most influential entity, J?”
3. (C)
With S and T in 3 and 4, respectively, Rule 5 prohibits J from being next to T in 5. Of
course, 1 and 6 are off limits to J, so the only space open for J is 2. H has to be before S (Rule
3), and the only open space before S is 1, so place H in 1. Since we can’t have STR in a row
(Rule 2), R can’t go in 5, so K must go in 5 and R must go in 6. The entire order is complete,
and only choice (C) corresponds.
(A), (B), (D), and (E) are all impossible.
• Work with the new information; get it down on paper and see where it leads. Take
the chain of reasoning as far as you can before moving on to the choices. In cases
where you’re able to fill in every entity, there’s not a question in the world the
testmakers can ask that you can’t answer.
4. (A)
With K in 1 and H in 5, Rule 3 forces S into slot 6. From there we’re left with J, R, and T to
fill out spaces 2, 3 and 4. Rule 5 still forbids T and J from being next to each other, so one of
them has to be in 2 and the other must be in space 4. R must separate J and T, so R must be
in 3, choice (A).
(B), (C), (D), and (E) all could be true, but need not be depending on how you place T and J
in the 2 and 4 slots.
• If you hadn’t seen right away that T and J had to split the 2 and 4 spots, don’t worry.
We were left with three students and three spaces for them, and if you tried placing
either J or T in 3, you would have seen that this would lead to a violation of Rule 5.
From there it’s a short logical leap to recognizing that only R can be in 3.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
• Have confidence in your work! If you tried out choice (A) by trying to place R
somewhere other than 3, and came to the conclusion that R indeed must deliver the
third speech, then there’s no reason to waste valuable time on the remaining choices.
5. (D)
This question stem creates the block SRK. Rule 3 adds H to the mix (but not necessarily
right before S) to give us H . . . SRK. This block takes up four of our six spaces, leaving only
J and T. We’re plenty used to splitting up these two by now thanks to Rule 5, so we can
further intuit that the H . . . SRK block can’t be in slots 1 through 4 or slots 3 through 6. Both
of these situations would force J and T next to each other. The block also can’t take
consecutive slots 2 through 5, because that would leave J in either 1 or 6, which violates
Rule 4. We know then that either J or T must be in between H and S with the other at one
end of the sequence. But once again we’re forced to remember that J can’t go at either end,
so J must come between H and S, leaving T in either 1 or 6. So here are the only
possibilities: THJSRK or HJSRKT. The only statement that could be true is choice (D).
• It took a lot of steps to get us to the two possibilities above. You didn’t need to take
the chain all the way in order to get the answer. Armed with H . . . SRK, you could
have worked through the choices attempting to legally place the remaining J and T.
Even with this method, you should be able to eliminate all but the correct choice.
• Look for blocks that take up space in the sketch. These make your work infinitely
easier.
6. (A)
After placing K in the 3 spot, there’s not much to do but try out each choice. If H is in 4, we
know that S must be in either 5 or 6. If S is in 5, the only spot open to J is 2. But if J is in 2,
this gives us JKH which violates Rule 1. So S can’t be in 5. If S is in 6, the only spot open to J
is 5 (we just saw that J in 2 is no good in any case). But if J is in 5, we get KHJ consecutive,
which also violates Rule 1. (A) is impossible and is therefore our answer.
(B) HSKJRT is an ordering that shows that this could be true.
(C) HJSKRT is an ordering that shows that this could be true.
(D) HTKSJR is an ordering that shows that this could be true.
(E) RJKTHS is an ordering that shows that this could be true.
• When you’re checking to see if something could happen, just try to make it work. If
it works in even one case, then you’ve proven its validity.
• Check your previous scratchwork for help on questions like this. We can quickly
eliminate choice (E) thanks to correct choice (D) of acceptability Q. 1.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
GAME 2 — Radar Areas
(Q. 7-13)
At first glance, this game may look odd and rather confusing, but don’t be intimidated
simply because a game looks scary. Keep your composure; the first step, as always, is to
nail down the game’s action:
The Action: Four circular radar areas—R, S, T, and U—are within the country of Zendu
(although the specific country doesn’t matter, as you’ll see in the fifth bullet point under
The Big Picture). Four planes—J, K, L, and M—are each in the air over Zendu in
accordance with the rules. The rules are bound to clear the situation up for us, but even at
first glance you should be able to intuit the Key Issues that the form the basis of the game:
1) Which planes are in which radar areas?
2) Which planes can, must, or cannot be in the same radar areas as which other planes?
The Initial Setup: An Initial Setup hinges mostly on the rules built into the opening
paragraph. Part (not all) of area R intersects area T, so draw a circle for R and another circle
T that partially overlaps R. Next, we’re told that part of area S intersects T. However, we
can’t add S to our sketch yet, because we don’t know about S’s relationship to R; Ah, but
now we do: The very next clause in that sentence says that R and S don’t intersect each
other. So simply draw a circle for S that intersects T but not R. Finally, we’re told that area
U is completely within areas R and T. U must therefore fall in the space where R and T
intersect, so draw another circle in this space and label it U. Be careful not to falsely
assume that U takes up the entire area where R and T intersect—this need not be the case.
It’s quite possible for a plane to be in the area where R and T intersect, yet still outside of
area U. This is more work than we’re used to for creating an Initial Setup, but in this game,
understanding and visually representing the Initial Setup is half the battle.
JKLM
R U
T
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
The Rules:
The “rules” in the intro paragraph allowed us to construct a picture of the physical layout
of the radar zones. The following indented rules tell us about the radar zones in which the
planes appear:
1) Our basic “loophole closer”: Each plane is in the game and somewhere within the radar
areas of our sketch.
2) Pretty straightforward, but a little thought will let you take it one step further: If J is in
area S, then it’s either in the part of S that intersects T or it’s in the part of S that doesn’t
intersect T. As long as you can visualize this, you can shorthand it any way you want. One
possibility is to write a “J” in area S with one arrow pointing to the space where S and T
intersect and another arrow pointing to the rest of S that doesn’t intersect T.
3) “K ≠ J” should keep this rule nice and clear. Whatever area one of these planes is in, the
other must be somewhere else. It would be difficult not to automatically combine this with
the previous rule to deduce right here and now that K is not in area S.
4) “L ≠ M” should do it for this one. Since we have no info so far on either of these planes,
we can’t take this any further, so jot it down and move on.
5) M is in exactly one of the areas: M = 1 should suffice to help us remember this.
Key Deductions: Above, we combined Rules 2 and 3 to deduce that K cannot be in area
S.
Now let’s look more closely at Rule 5. Since M is in exactly one area, M cannot be in area
U. Why? Because If a plane is in area U, then it’s actually in three areas: U, R, and T. Can M
be in area R? Sure, as long as it’s not in the part of R that intersects with area T. The same is
true for M in areas T or S; it’s okay, as long as M isn’t in the intersecting part.
The Final Visualization: So, here’s our final, rather circular, sketch:
JKLM
K≠J
L≠M
M=1
K not in S
M not in U
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R U
T
S
J
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
The Big Picture:
• Force yourself to ask the relevant questions. When you’re told that S and T intersect,
you must go further and ask “But wait, what about S and R? How do they
interrelate?” This is the kind of active thinking that the Games section requires and
rewards.
• Remember, critical reading isn’t a requirement limited to the Logical Reasoning and
Reading Comp sections—it’s vital in Logic Games as well, especially when
interpreting rules. For example, it’s extremely important that you recognize that just
because area U is in the part of areas R and T that intersect, U doesn’t necessarily
have to be that entire area. Also, be sure that you didn’t get the rule backwards and
put all of area R inside of area U.
• Don’t be thrown just because a game is unfamiliar. On some Games sections, the
testmakers throw in a somewhat unfamiliar game. While it won’t necessarily be the
hardest game on the section, they do want to see whether or not you can think on
your feet, use your common sense, and not be thrown for a loop just because the
setup is slightly different from a more typical game.
• If you’re having a hard time getting a handle on a seemingly unfamiliar game, try out
different situations. For example, try putting M in areas R, S, T, and U and see what
happens. Mentally work out ways of separating L and M, or separating K and J. This
way you can quickly get a feel for which planes can and can’t go where. Working out
a few “what if?” scenarios should make you feel more comfortable with the game
and help you get a better handle on it.
• Don’t obsess over extraneous information. In this game, the fact that the zones fall
within the country of Zendu doesn’t matter in the slightest. Did you draw a huge
circle representing Zendu and then try to put the radar areas inside? Why? Did you
worry about the planes being in the air at exactly noon? Why? The time frame never
changes; if it did, this would be more like a “process” game. Sometimes the
testmakers throw in this extra useless information in order to get nervous test takers
to waste as much time as possible. Don’t fall for it.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
The Questions:
7. (D)
As with all acceptability questions, let’s just check the rules against the choices. Rule 1 kills
(A) because K isn’t included. Rule 2 takes care of (B). Rule 3 knocks off (E). (C) is the only
tricky one. Our Big Deduction above allows us to cross it off because we know that M,
which can only be in one area, can’t be in area U, which is actually within two other areas. If
this wasn’t enough to kill (C), since area U is within area T, this choice places L and M in
the same area (T), which violates Rule 4. In any case, the only choice left is (D), which must
be the acceptable listing.
• This is an unusual way of presenting an acceptability question. But your experience
with acceptability questions in many other games should have helped you recognize
this one as such as soon as you saw the nature of the answer choices.
8. (A)
If K is in 2 of the areas, then K must be in the area where R and T intersect (we already
deduced that K can’t be in S). In order for this to be possible, J must be in the part of S that
doesn’t intersect T, since Rule 3 forces K and J into different areas. (A) can’t be true.
(B) and (C) must be true.
(D) and (E) could be true, but need not be.
• The relevant question here is: “How can K be within exactly two areas?” This
question should lead you to a greater understanding of the game—the only way a
plane can be in exactly two areas is if it’s in S and T or in R and T (U is no good,
because any plane in U is automatically in three areas).
9. (E)
We just saw in the setup for question 8 that K could be in area T, which quickly kills (A),
(B), and (C). The only difference between (D) and (E) is whether or not J can be in area T.
And lo and behold, we see that J can be in T from the correct choice (D) to acceptability
question 7. Basically, there’s no reason why any of the planes cannot be in area T, and the
answer is (E).
• This is the second game in a row where the acceptability question helped on a
subsequent question. When a question asks about what could possibly happen,
check all of your previous scratchwork, especially the correct answer to the
acceptability question.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
10. (E)
Here’s our Big Deduction staring us right in the face: M in area U? Can’t do it; M can only
be in one area, but U is within two others. Choice (E) is the five-second answer. If you
hadn’t made this deduction up front, or simply forgot about it, you could get the answer
by trying out the choices (which will no doubt take longer than five seconds).
(A) is possible; we just saw from Q. 9 that everyone could be in T.
(B) K can be in U as long as J isn’t in T.
(C) is possible as long as M isn’t in R. You may also have noticed that L was in R in one of
the wrong (and therefore possible) answer choices from question 8.
(D) is possible; once again we benefit from turning to correct choice (D) for acceptability
Q. 7 which validly places M in R.
• Who said this game was a killer? We’re more than half way through it and we’ve
already seen some very easy questions (easy, that is, if you did the right work up
front).
• Don’t forget about your Key Deductions! If a non-if questions simply asks for
something that cannot be true, ask yourself, “did I notice something that can’t be
true?” If so , scan the choices for it, and you’ve got yourself a five-second point—a
nice little reward for the work you put in up front.
11. (D)
A single plane can’t be in what two areas? We know that S and R don’t intersect, so a plane
couldn’t be in both S and R. Not surprisingly, that’s too obvious, and therefore not a
choice. But we need go only one step further: Since area U is completely within area R,
there’s no way for a plane to be simultaneously in areas S and U. As easy as that, choice (D).
(A), (C) The areas listed in each of these choices intersect, so it’s definitely possible for a
plane to be in both areas at once.
(B), (E) Area U is within areas R and T.
• Actively pursue Logic Games answers. If you can, try to figure out the answer ahead
of time and then look for it among the choices.
• Decode tricky question stems. The only possible difficulty with this question is in
understanding what they’re looking for. When you need to, translate the question
stem into something more manageable, much like we did above.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
12. (E)
M is in area T. Since M is in exactly one area, so we know that M is in the part of T that
doesn’t intersect with R or S. Rule 4 says that L and M can’t be in the same area, so we know
that L can’t be in the parts of R or S that intersect with T. Thus L can’t be in U; L must be in
the non-intersecting part of area R or the non-intersecting part of area S. At most, L can be
in only one area, which leads us to correct choice (E).
(A) through (D) are each quite possible.
• When given information about an entity, search for the other entities most affected
by this information. The only relationship M has with another plane is with L, and L
shows up in three out of the five answer choices. These are good clues that signal
that the restricted entity we’re looking for will probably be L, so you may have been
able to save some time by recognizing this and checking out choices (B), (C) and (E)
first.
13. (A)
The only way for a plane to be within three areas is to be in area U, so L is in U (and
therefore is also in R and T). Rule 4 prohibits L and M from being in the same area, so the
only area open to M is S (which kills choices (D) and (E)). We deduced way back that K
can’t be in area S, so axe (C). As we said before, the only way to be in three areas is to be in
area U. Since S and U don’t intersect, J can’t be in three areas. Cross off (B), which leaves us
with our answer, (A).
• Trying out choices could be time consuming, but by working with the new
information and crossing off choices as you go along, the time required can usually
be greatly reduced. Here, you may have tried out (A) first, and found it to be
perfectly plausible; in that case, you needn’t even waste time on the other choices.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
GAME 3 — Car Pool Drivers
(Q. 14-19)
The Action: Sequencing with one small twist: We’re asked to schedule four people—Fritz,
Gina, Helen, and Jerry—on the days on which they drive, Monday through Saturday.
Here’s the minor twist—four drivers for six days means that some folks have to drive on
more than one day. The Key Issues will be:
1) Who drives on which day?
2) Which people can, must, or cannot drive on consecutive days?
3) Which people drive before and after which other drivers?
The Initial Setup: Keep this simple; list the days across the page and the drivers off to the
side, like so:
FGHJ
M T W Th F S
The Rules:
1) This is a loop-hole closer, but unlike most loop-hole closers, it’s an important one.
Every person drives at least one day. This means that no driver is left out of the schedule
(which until this rule was a distinct possibility).
2) “NO 2 IN A ROW” should do it for this one. For example, if Gina drives on Monday, she
can’t drive on Tuesday.
3) “NO F” over our M for Monday should remind us of this.
4) Break this rule up. “J” above the sketch with an arrow pointing to the “W” for
Wednesday and the “S” for Saturday will take care of the first part of this rule. However,
Jerry could drive on both Wednesday and Saturday as well as driving on other days. Add
something to your sketch to keep this added information in mind. We’ll write “at least”
next to the J in our sketch to remind us of this, but whatever way you came up with,
including just memorizing the rule, is fine as long as you come away with the correct
interpretation.
5) “If G drives on Mon, J isn’t on Sat.” Remember to jot down the contrapositive: “If J
drives on Sat, G doesn’t drive on Mon.”
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
Key Deductions: As with Game 1, no major deductions leap off the page at us. However, J
is in Rules 4 and 5, so let’s take a closer look there. J must drive on Wednesday, Saturday,
or both (and possibly elsewhere, remember). If the conditional in Rule 5 takes place (i.e., G
drives on Monday), then J can’t be on Saturday and would have to drive on Wednesday (at
least). Also think about the “NO 2 IN A ROW” rule. If we have J on Wednesday, then we
know that J can’t drive on Tuesday or Thursday. Since this line of thinking is predicated on
a conditional, it won’t play out in every question. Therefore, it isn’t absolutely necessary to
think all this through in order to succeed in this game. However, noticing such things up
front is always helpful in the long run, and will help you to develop and to reinforce the
good habits and analytical thinking skills that will be rewarded on test day.
The Final Visualization: Here’s our final sketch:
FGHJ
No 2 in a row
If G on Mon, J not on Sat
If J on Sat, G not on Mon
No F
J at least
M T W Th F S
The Big Picture:
• Rule 4 is wordy and chock full of implications. Often, a rule like this would mandate
that Jerry drive on Wednesday or Saturday, but not both. However, the testmakers
threw us a slight curve here. No biggie—whenever you see a rule that’s slightly
different from what you’re used to, take a few seconds to think it through.
• Often, the entity that appears in the most rules will be the game’s most influential
player. Never let this entity stray too far from your mind.
• If an entity is limited to one of two positions, it’s often worth plotting out the results
of each. We call this investigating the “limited options.” But it’s also important to
recognize when this strategy doesn’t apply: Here, we could look at what happens if
Jerry drives on Wednesday and then what happens when he drives on Saturday, but
since he can drive on both days, and on other days as well, discovering all of the
possible options that result from Jerry’s situation would be a near impossibility. As
stated in the Key Deductions paragraph above, mentally manipulating a few
possible scenarios is probably all that’s necessary before moving on to the
questions.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
The Questions:
14. (D)
This game too begins with an acceptability question. Pick a rule and compare. Rule 1 axes
(E) since Fritz isn’t included. Rule 2 does away with (A). Rule 4 kills (C). Rule 5 takes care
of (B), leaving us with (D).
• “Could be the schedule” is just another way of asking for “an acceptable schedule.”
15. (E)
Not much to do except try out the choices. We’ll get to why the others are wrong, but first,
if the order is G, F, J, H, F, G we see that (E) is possible and is our answer.
(A) This is a direct violation of Rule 4. We know that Jerry drives on at least one of these
days.
(B) If Gina drives on Monday and Wednesday, then Jerry can’t drive on Saturday (Rule 5),
which once again violates Rule 4.
(C) We know that Jerry drives on at least Wednesday or Saturday, so if he also drives on
Tuesday and Friday, this would have him driving two days in a row. That’s a no-no
according to Rule 2.
(D) If Gina drives on Monday, then Rule 5 forces Jerry to drive on Wednesday (at least). If
Jerry also drives on Thursday, he would be driving two days in a row, which again violates
Rule 2.
• Notice how every wrong choice can be eliminated by paying attention to the Jerry
situation. Keep your most influential entities in mind.
• A non-if could be true question pretty much forces you to try out the choices. If it
looks like this will be time consuming, leave it temporarily and look for surer
ground, like Qs. 16 and 17 which give us more definite information. However, don’t
immediately skip a question like 15; many non-if questions like this turn out to be
fairly straightforward, especially if you’ve thought the game through in the setup
stage.
16. (C)
If Jerry drives on Wednesday and Saturday only, then the contrapositive of Rule 5 tells us
that Gina can’t drive on Monday. Rule 3 already axed Fritz from Monday, and since in this
one Jerry drives only on Wednesday and Saturday, Jerry can’t drive on Monday either. The
only person left for Monday is Helen, choice (C).
(A), (B), (D), and (E) could be true, but need not be.
• Always keep track of the entities in a game. Very often answers come from simply
running out of possible players to stick into a certain space.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
17. (A)
If Gina drives on Monday and Saturday only, then Jerry must drive on Wednesday (at
least) according to Rule 4. Fritz and Helen must each drive on at least one of the remaining
three days. This leaves one day open that Fritz, Helen, or Jerry will drive on. Check the
choices, and we see that (A) must be true. Whoever drives on that extra day will be the one
other person besides Gina to drive on exactly two days.
(B) No, the person who drives on Wednesday (i.e. Jerry) could drive on Friday.
(C), (D) The possible ordering G H J F J G kills both of these choices.
(E) No, Fritz could be the driver on Tuesday (e.g. G F J H J G).
• Once again, being familiar with the numbers aspect of the game proved to be very
useful. Here, remembering that all of the entities had to be used somewhere was half
the battle.
18. (B)
Nothing to do but check out the choices. If Gina drives on Monday, Jerry can’t drive
Saturday (Rule 5), which means that Jerry must drive on Wednesday. According to Rule 2,
he can’t drive on Tuesday as well. (B) can’t be true and is the answer.
(A) H F J F G J is fine, so (A) could be true.
(C) and (E) G H J F J G shows that both of these could be true.
(D) H J G F G J is acceptable, so (D) is not the answer.
• Don’t be surprised late in a game when questions begin to test the same concepts.
This game should be renamed “Car Pool Drivers: The Placement of Jerry.” As soon as
you got to (B), your reaction should have been “seen it, done it, been there”—this is
the one that’s impossible.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
19. (E)
Fritz drives twice, but the question stem and Rule 3 cut his options down to Thursday,
Friday, and Saturday. The only way to get two days of driving out of him is for him to
drive Thursday and Saturday (otherwise, he’d have to drive two days in a row, violating
Rule 2). Since Saturday is taken, Rule 4 forces Jerry to drive on Wednesday, at least. Jerry
could also drive on Friday, with Gina on Monday and Helen on Tuesday, so (E) could be
true and is our answer.
(A) Fritz can’t drive three times since the stem says that he drives exactly twice. If any of the
others drive three times, that wouldn’t leave enough days for everyone to take a turn
driving.
(B) Fritz drives twice, so that leaves four days for the other three people. No, three people
can’t drive exactly once; one of them must drive twice to cover all six days.
(C) Jerry must drive on Wednesday which is immediately before Fritz’s day on Thursday.
(D) No, Jerry must drive on Wednesday.
• Work with the given information and take it as far as you can. When you go to check
the answer choices, the wrong ones will fall that much faster.
• Don’t be thrown by number-related choices like (A) and (B). These aren’t concerned
with who drives on what day, but rather with how many times each person drives.
Continue to ask yourself relevant questions, which in this case would be: “How can
we cover all six days given the Fritz info in the stem?”
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
GAME 4 — Plumber Teams
(Q. 20-24)
The Action: This game involves distributing plumbers into four groups of two, which
suggests a grouping distribution action. Technically, there’s a selection element as well:
We need to select eight of the nine plumbers. However, it’s probably easier to think in
terms of having to leave one plumber out as opposed to having to choose eight of the nine.
The plumbers are chosen from five experienced plumbers—F, G, J, K, and M—and four
inexperienced plumbers—r, s, t, and v. Let’s use capital letters for the experienced
plumbers and lowercase for the inexperienced ones. The Key Issues will be:
1) Which two plumbers are assigned to each team?
2) Which plumbers can, must, or cannot be assigned to the same team?
The Initial Setup: We have four teams of two, so let’s put down four sets of two dashes.
List the entities off to the side:
EX
FGJKM
inex.
rstn
__ __ / __ __ / __ __ / __ __
The Rules:
1) Basically a loop-hole closer, but the game would be undoable without it.
2) This rule narrows down the possible pairings enormously. Let’s write an “X” for
“experienced” under one of the dashes in each of the four teams.
3) Three rules for the price of one: “NO FM”—“NO Fr”—“NO Fv.” These three restrictions
tell us quite a bit about Frank’s situation.
4) “If t, then G or K” tells us that only these two experienced plumbers may team up with
the inexperienced Tim.
5) One rule for the price of one: “NO Jr” will do it.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
Key Deductions: Rule 3 severely limits Frank’s options, and Rule 4 limits it further. If Tim
may only be teamed with Gene or Kathy, then obviously Tim may not team up with Frank.
Add “NO Ft” to your list of Frank rules. This means that Sally is the only inexperienced
plumber that Frank may team up with. Does that mean “always Fs?” No; remember that
we have five experienced plumbers and need only four of them. It is possible for Frank to
team up with another experienced plumber. If you like, you can write “If F, then Fs or F + X
(experienced).”
The Final Visualization: Here’s what we’re armed with heading into the questions:
EX
FGJKM
inex.
rstn
__ __ / __ __ / __ __ / __ __
X
X
X
X
No FM
No Fr
No Fn
If t, then G or K
No Jr
No Ft
If F, then Fs or F + X
The Big Picture:
• Always work out a game’s number situation in advance, by asking yourself the
relevant questions. In this case: “How can I split five experienced and four
inexperienced plumbers into four groups of two?” Answer: Always leave one out.
Then, when you get more information, expand on what you know. As a consequence
of Rule 2, you should ask yourself: “How do the numbers work now?” Answer: We
must include four experienced and four inexperienced plumbers OR five
experienced plumbers (giving us one team made up only of experienced plumbers)
and three inexperienced ones.
• In three of the four games on this section it’s beneficial to identify the most
important entity, which is normally the entity that appears in the most rules. Here it’s
obviously Frank. Once again, there are no earth-shattering deductions to be made in
this game, but thinking through Frank’s situation in advance greatly helps in
answering the questions.
• Always turn negatives into positives. Knowing who doesn’t pair up with Frank is
not nearly as valuable as knowing who does or can (in this case, Sally or one of the
“X” plumbers).
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
The Questions:
20. (C)
Here’s our deduction about Frank. The only inexperienced plumber that Frank can team
up with is Sally, choice (C). If you don’t remember how we deduced this, look back at our
work under Key Deductions. (Note that Kathy, choice (A), is not an inexperienced
plumber.)
• This question shows why Kaplan stresses taking so much time up front. Just going
through that extra thought about Frank’s possibilities, turned this question into
nearly a gimme.
21. (C)
This is similar to an acceptability question. Rule 3 allows us to cross off (A) and (B). Rule 2
says that each team must have at least one experienced plumber, so there goes (D) and (E).
We’re left with (C).
• This certainly didn’t take the form of a normal “acceptability” question, but by using
the familiar technique of checking rules against the choices, it can be answered
pretty quickly.
22. (B)
Take it one step at a time: Tim is assigned to a team, and Sally is assigned to another. Sally’s
partner is a plumber who could have been Tim’s partner. Tim can only partner with Gene
and Kathy. So of G and K, one of them will go with Tim and the other will go with Sally.
Since Sally isn’t teamed with Frank, then Frank can only be teamed with another
experienced plumber (besides Gene and Kathy who are already taken). Mark is no good
thanks to Rule 3, which leaves only Jill, choice (B).
• Take questions with multiple hypotheticals apart; handle one thing at a time.
• Don’t be intimidated by a complex-looking stem; often, the more information they
give you, the better off you are.
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LSAT PREP ______________________________________________________________ LSAT Test XV Explained: Section IV
23. (A)
If Gene is out, we know that 1) all of the other plumbers are used, and 2) Tim’s partner is
Kathy (see Rule 4). Since exactly four experienced plumbers are used, we must split them
all up. Frank must therefore be teamed with an inexperienced one, which means Sally.
Rule 5 says that Jill and Roberta can’t be teamed up, so Jill must be teamed with the only
inexperienced plumber left, Vernon choice (A).
24. (A)
All of the inexperienced plumbers are used, so one of our experienced plumbers is the one
to be left out. R, T, and V aren’t with Gene, so either Gene is teamed with Sally or Gene is
the one left out. If Gene is teamed with Sally, then Frank’s only possible inexperienced
partner is taken, which means that he’s the one left out. Sally must therefore be teamed with
either Frank or Gene, choice (A).
• Notice how helpful our Frank deduction was to this game: It directly helped us
answer Q. 20 and indirectly played a role in answering Qs. 22, 23 and 24. (In Q. 21 you
could get by without it by simply referencing Rule 3.) This shows that the value of a
Key Deduction extends far beyond simply helping to answer the one question that
directly tests for it.
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I.N. LL3113Rev.A Printed in the USA