haha well played LSAT writers. made me grin when I saw the right answer in BR was so simple.

@Tuna Some of my vitriol here was just because I got this wrong and it annoyed me, and I do see from all the replies how B indeed weakens. It's still a terrible question though. (actually I don't agree with this but I'm going to keep it in anyways)

If they cannot burn anything other than lichen, they're going to have to smoke their meat, since it does not produce much heat. You mention the possibility that their "intent wasn't necessarily to smoke meat for preservation" but the problem is, whether they wanted to or not, B says they had to smoke their meat because all they had was lichen, which produces a ton of smoke and little heat. So if you wanna say "well lichen was all they had, so they burned that," then great, they were definitely smoking the meat in that case.

But on the other hand, what if they had better cooking materials? They might've used those instead of lichen. As you said, maybe their burning of lichen was for ceremonial, communicative, or protective purposes. That becomes a lot more possible If we know they had other ways to cook meat, which is what AC A suggests. Argument weakened!

If you want to say that my assuming lichen can only smoke meat (and not cook it some other way) is too far an assumption, that's fine. (although the argument clearly supports that thought, as does common sense) But to argue that such an assumption is objectively less reasonable than assuming having superior cooking methods would make it less likely they smoked meat, that seems to me to be A. outside the scope of the question and B. they kind of subjectivity the Lsat is supposed to avoid.

Lastly, not that I think this really matters, you bolded the word definitely, but the argument explicitly uses a lesser degree of certainty (probably) which is a real difference. We do not need to weaken the idea that they definitely smoked meat, because that is not asserted here. Not really important for why I think it's wrong but would matter on some questions.

In fact you know, really digging into the question again I do agree with my original analysis. What a stupid question lmao. I was going to be like ohh I do see how B weakens but it really does not, it lowkey strengthens. Also, this was a fun way to avoid actual studying, thanks for that! (genuine)

This is by far the worst question I've ever seen oh my god.

I just got a 172 on the April test, but I plan to retake in August and try for a 175+( best PT was a 178). My diagnostic was a 165 and I got stuck around the 168-170 range for a good while before finally breaking into the 170s. I never really learned "lawgic" or theories or whatever bc that part was sort of intuitive to me, and things like a wrong answer journal or writing or logic chains never helped me, so maybe take this with a grain of salt, because I know those things r super important for most people.

Anyways, a few things really helped me break into the 170s. I'd echo the other comment and say focus in on the underlying patterns. Try to pair that with a conceptual knowledge of the problems rather than a formulaic one though. I struggled early with flaw problems, but once I got a specific pattern down for attacking them, they became free points 99% of the time. Look through your analytics and focus on the problem types that give you trouble and just break your process down and make it automatic. You want to instantly know what a question stem is asking and then that understanding should trigger a specific question in your brain. At the same time. I feel like too many people try to make their process find the correct answer, without really understanding it, and that kills you on questions that want to trip you up. Your primary goal should just be understanding the stimulus, you can worry about the correct answer after.

Another thing you might find helpful is to focus on your timing, I also felt like it was little trick questions that were getting me and locking in on timing really helped. I was always finishing with around 5 minutes left, I tried to slow down and started barely getting through sections, and I finally found a sweet spot after trial and error. I check in every 5 questions and I have a specific number in my head that I want to be at and I felt like that clock kept me on task and focused and helped eliminate silly mistakes. I had a tendency to lose focus in the middle of the section and make a silly mistake that an increase on timing fixed.

Most importantly though, I would sift through your PTs and really zero in on your 2, 3, and 4 star question misses. You can worry about 5 stars once you crack 170, but you should have the mindset that cannot afford to miss 3 star questions imo. I was so frustrated that I would have a miss or two in the lower difficulties and by lowkey obsessing over them and forgetting about the really hard ones, I fixed that issue. I almost always found that my 3 star misses especially were due to either a mental error or a faulty understanding of the question, and by really focusing constantly on them I became much more aware of those issues and less likely to make the same errors. You could of course do that for every question, but oftentimes the hard ones are just really hard and it is not a super productive use of your study time.

I have no clue if this is helpful insight or just surface level advice you have already gotten, but I hope it helps! You've got this!

(PS. my scores also went up when I made a conscious effort to take some pressure off myself, it's important to remember you're already at a pretty impressive score)

Comical. Not only does a weaken the argument, but B actually strengthens it. By far the worst question I have ever seen on the LSAT.

Atrociously stupid question. Passage A in does not in anyway support that. If i begin an argument by saying "someone people believe the earth is flat" and I then go on to defend the earth as round, it would be ridiculous to respond to me by saying "well you admitted that it is possible it is round". No. I just said some people think that, that does not mean I believe it is conceivable. The author is doing the exact same thing. Some people believe in judicial candor whatever blah blah blah, but actually they are wrong. Whatever, I get that on a technicality if you even acknowledge another viewpoints existence it is technically conceivably possible, but by the definition this question is using there is nothing that can be imagined that is not conceivably correct. On a further note, even if they author is acknowledging that view, the way the phrase it does not imply any sort of benefit. If you say view A (the authors view) is foolhardy and utopian, that does not necessarily imply that the view B has "positive benefits"? Maybe its just less worse than view B. Infuriating because I could actually get a question like this on test day and it would have a real effect on my life.