I think (E) has gotten a decent amount of attention in the comments, but I want to add my take on why it's incorrect.

Recall the author's conclusion: the florist must have made a mistake.

And the premises:

know D well --> known to send violets, not roses

/know D well --> add a signed card

D received roses and no card.

Analysis: From the premises, we can infer that, unless the florist made a mistake, the flowers were not sent by someone who doesn't know D well. But what does not follow is that the flowers were not sent by someone who knows D well.

Let's give (E) the charity that it deserves and add it to our premises to see if it weakens our conclusion.

• know D well <-s-> add a card

Okay, so if they knew D well, then not only would they have known to send violets, but they also might've added a card.

• If true, then we have another reason to be slightly suspicious of the florist. Because we know for sure that they were not sent by someone who does not know D well, and (B) gives us more reason to think that they were not sent by someone who does know D well.... all supporting the conclusion that the florist may have made a mistake.

It took me a second to figure out what (A) is actually saying, but the written explanation does a great job of explaining it.

The stimulus is all about answering the question: what is the cause of the price increase?

(A) comes along and is like "hey there, let's talk about what happens after the price does increase..."

It's like that colleague trying to distract you from the task at hand. (A), please, stay out of this!

“An obvious separation within the Art community” implies that the separation is between individuals, not between forms of art/literature.

(E) is phrased in a confusing and general way, but it is an overly simple way of characterizing the critics’ desires: to fully commit to genres and themes.

The phrasing of ‘expectation’ is slightly different than what we may have anticipated, but it merely reflects the first sentence of the second paragraph: that writers “should” censor themselves and confine themselves to particular forms.

There are two reasons why (D) is wrong: it mentions American literature as opposed to African American literature. Since it’s talking about a different type of literature, we can immediately eliminate it. But even (D) did refer to African American literature, the critics never say that a separation is needed. We are only told that the critics thought Ellison should’ve focused more on the distinct African American style, but not about separating the styles. In the second paragraph, where Ellison responds, we are given the idea that there is an expectation of style separation. But it’s crucial to remember that only Ellison points this out when referring to the critics, and the critics don’t explicitly mention it themselves.

With (A), we can infer that creating a positive social change counts as political action.

There are a lot of different ways to think about this stimulus.

As I mentioned below, "..unless what Grimes or the company president said is incorrect..." is equivalent to saying "If premises, then conclusion."

• This is exactly what we see in every other LSAT argument ever. 'Unless the premises don't hold, then the conclusion holds.'

Therefore, here is my simplified translation of the stimulus: Changes were made, and neither the company president or Yeung was told about the changes. According to a contract, either the company president or any lawyer in the company's legal department must be told before changes are made. So, the contract was violated.

But how can we map this argument out? One way that I've been thinking about is by distinguishing that, in this stimulus, we are given both a rule and an application.

Rule: /CP told AND /LLD told --> contract violated

Application: /CP told --> contract violated

But in order for the conclusion to follow, we need to be ensured that the sufficient condition of the rule is satisfied. That is why we need '/LLD told' for the conclusion to follow.

A bunch of the comments below use A --> B <-s-> C to make sense of the stimulus, but I find that far overcomplicated for this stimulus. I wanted to share another approach that is simpler (to me) for SA questions.

Premises:

X --> Y

Conclusion:

Y --> Z

This above is the typical structure of an SA question: a new variable (Z) appearing in the conclusion that was never mentioned in the premises.

In these cases, we need a 'bridge' to take us from the new variable to the one originally mentioned in the premises.

To create our bridge, we must follow these steps:

(1) Keep the new variable in its position

• ___ --> Z

(2) Add the original variable in the other position

• X --> Z

Done! Now, let's put these steps to action in our argument:

P: routine recording --> pizzeria

C: pizzeria --> use DM marketing better

Bridge step (1): ___ --> use DM marketing better

Bridge step (2): routine recording --> use DM marketing better

That's exactly (E)!

What I wish I had known (writing sample complete).

• You absolutely cannot view the piece after you submit it. Not after it's approved, literally never. I was a little sad about this because I was proud of it. But not that it matters much anyway.

• You can't copy and paste, meaning that: if you want to move evidence/example from 1 paragraph to the introduction (for example), you can't do that.

• Make sure to do everything possible to disable grammarly (even though I turned it off, it still came on). Thankfully I didn't get flagged for this but it was a close call.

• Reading more random question prompts the day before (asked the internet/AI to make random prompts) was really helpful for me. I didn't write a whole essay sample each time, I just was practicing the habit of reading something and then immediately making a strong opinion on some topic that was boring for me.

You've got this everyone!!

For some reason I associated the word 'population' in (A) as relating only to human population. Whoops.

In the context of wildlife populations, (A) completely makes sense.

Recall the MP of each passage

• A: We need integrated control to stop purple loosestrife from spreading!!

• B: Attempts to stop purple loosestrife from spreading are misled.

How it strengthens passage A:

• We are told that "serious reductions in waterfowl and aquatic furbearer productivity have been observed." We can infer with (A) that these reductions may be the sign of an even worse environmental issue, extinction.

• MP: This strengthens the proposal that we need more control measures, it's a problem!

How it weakens passage B:

• We are told that "none of the species highlighted (muskrat, mink) can be considered threatened in North America."

• MP: This weakens the attack that we don't need any control measures, because it's a problem!

(C) is incorrect because, while it may weaken passage B, it doesn't strengthen passage A. Remember that passage A displays total unawareness of the arguments made in passage B. So it's unclear how (C) would bolster anything in A.

• It's easy to get trapped into thinking (C) supports A by using the logic of "well it weakens B, and B is responding to A." Yes, B is responding to A, but A has no clue that B even existed.

I've noticed that RC MSS questions frequently feature a trap AC that seems supported, with one word that throws it off the rails, and then the correct answer phrased in a confusing way.

The word 'only' in (D) makes it completely unsupported. Although (E) is complex to understand, it's exactly the type of AC we cannot eliminate. Instead, we should eliminate the ACs that are evidently unsupported first (D) and then take a closer look at the complex ones like (E).

Although there are so many moving parts in the stimulus, the written explanation cuts to its core:

We have a bunch of premises that tell us about modern literature, and then a conclusion that tells something about modern literature.

For fun and simplicity:

Premises: modern literature --> ______

Conclusion: modern literature --> ______

Now let's take it a step further:

Premises: modern literature --> X

Conclusion: modern literature --> Y

This is an invalid argument. In order for the conclusion to properly follow we need a statement like 'X --> Y.'

In the context of the stimulus, 'X' could be a couple things: sympathetic treatment of such characters, or being unconcerned about contributing to societal good. We need something that tells us that 'X' is sufficient for some damage. That is exactly what (B) does.

Making the inference for (A):

Editorial: When legislators discover that some public service is not being adequately provided, their most common response is to boost the funding for that public service.

So when the govt finds out that a service is not being run well, the most common thing that they do is to put in more money to the service. For example, if a library is super run down and lacking enough books, then they'll allocate more of the budget to the library.

Because of this, the least efficiently run government bureaucracies are the ones that most commonly receive an increase in funds.

Because of the fact that, when there are service inadequacies, the govt will most often put more money into the service, the least of the efficient bureaucracies are the ones that most often get more money.

From reading the stimulus alone, we must rely on the 'because of this fact' turn of phrase to make an inference about how the two sentences are related to eachother. The author is using the first sentence to say that the second sentence occurs because of the first sentence.

Therefore, we can infer that there is overlap between the inadequate public services and the least efficiently run bureaucracies.

Although it seemed to me that there is a fine line between a theory and a mechanism, they are quite different concepts.

Let's take the idea of a snowflake landing on my shoulder.

• A mechanism for this phenomenon would be that “water vapor condenses into ice crystals in clouds, which grow and fall as snowflakes.”

• A theory, however, would be something like “snow forms due to atmospheric conditions involving temperature and moisture.”

So while a theory explains a phenomenon broadly, a mechanism explains how it actually happens step-by-step.

Yes, both (D) and (E) are completely accurate. However, are both a good answer to the question stem? No.

A solid prephrase to this question might look something like: to suggest that a was of classifying art history is overly narrow.

I had this strong prephrase in mind, but ultimately thought that (E) was too strong. However, the question is not 'most strongly supported.' We are asked to choose what most resembles the author's primary purpose. Sticking to the prephrase, (D) is totally on the wrong track. (E), although slightly stronger, is more in line.

@Stas1973 Further, (A) is tricky, but in no place does Arthur suggest that he believes that Marta thinks walking trails would be completely unproductive. Marta just thinks that there are other, more productive ways (a relative claim), and Arthur seems to understand that. Nowhere is it suggested that Arthur mistakes Marta for making an absolute claim.

Marta thinks that there may be more productive ways of using the old railway lane other than for walking trails.

• For example, maybe Marta thinks that opening a skating rink or a pizzeria would include more residents, or generate more profit for the city.

She doesn't tell us why she thinks so (no premises). All we have is context: there are complaints that there is not enough recreational areas in the city, and some people favor turning the land into walking trails.

Arthur says that the idea of transforming the land into a walking trail should not be dismissed. He thinks this because it's been too long without recreational areas (this sounds like one of the complaints Marta was talking about), and the walking trail would be ideal for the old railway land.

But wait a minute.... Arthur's conclusion was that 'we should not dismiss the proposal.' Did Marta ever say that we should dismiss it? Not at all.

In fact, there is totally a possibility that Marta thinks the land should immediately be turned into a walking trail. All that Marta said was that it won't be the most productive option. But who knows if productivity even matters to Marta.

• For example, out of options for an afternoon snack, someone chooses a chocolate bar, while they acknowledge that there may be healthier options. But even though they say it's not the healthiest option, they might still completely choose the chocolate bar for other reasons.

Gosh Olaf... It's very fitting that you, a melting snowman, misunderstood the difference between regional and global temperature.

Charlene is trying to tell you that these organisms that eat pollutants can be more/less active depending on how 'normal' the temperature is for that place.

• If -10 degrees is the typical temperature for Anna and Elsa's castle, then at -20 degrees these organisms might eat less pollutants.

When you respond to Charlene, you say that organisms in two different places both eat the same rate of pollutants. But Charlene didn't say anything about comparisons between different places; she only mentioned temperature within a region.

• - 10 degrees might be common for you, but it is rare in the middle of the desert.

Yes, the Arctic may not have 'normal' temperatures in the context of the whole earth, but maybe the Arctic has normal temperatures for, well, being the Arctic!

@SlippinJimmy2026

The career advice that the career consultant discounts is: self-deprication should not be done by employees.

The premise used by the career consultant to discount the advice is: self-deprication is beneficial to employers.

The evidence concerns a completely different group (employers) than the conclusion addresses.

(A) is so sneaky! It does not, however, resolve the paradox. This is because we are already told in the premises that natural-grass field are more expensive to maintain.

So say that, as in the case of (A), the current artificial turf has costed $5,000 weekly, we know that the new natural turf will cost more, say, $6,000 weekly.

Another reason that (B) is incorrect aside from that mentioned in the written explanation is that it is inaccurate in the context of the question stem. Even if you missed the fact that there are actually carnivores present (just not ones fast enough), then you can still eliminate (B) based on the fact that it's not support provided for the biologist's explanation.

@nathanponce01 I, like you, chose (A) for the same reasons. However, I now see what I missed that makes (A) completely incorrect. 'Paradoxically' implies that something is occurring in a way different from what would be expected. What we would expect is that the weakening of the ozone layer contributes to env health + quality of life in a negative way. 'Paradoxically,' though, suggests that the weakening of the ozone layer contributes in a positive way. That's why it's totally incorrect.

(E) is incorrect because it suggests a causal relationship that is largely unsupported. Simply the fact that the community implicitly adopts the economists' POV does not mean that it's because of the economists' POV.

The question stem really caught me here: "in the tropics," makes (E) completely irrelevant.

@Catpop In a way, yes, we could say it’s too specific. More simply put, (E) sets out a super specific ‘requirement’ that’s not actually ‘required.’ We couldn’t care less if one engine has double nozzles, with both a short and long. For instance, maybe all our engines have only one engine. Does that make sense?

I think a big obstacle to overcome with this question is understanding exactly which group the question stem refers to.

Scholars who analyze works written in Latin during the Renaissance includes:

• latin specialists

• intellectual historians

We are told that the latin specialists lack intellectual history but have the language training, and the intellectual historians have intellectual history background but not language training. So it's kind of like each group only has 1/2 of what we need. (B) calls that out!

The stimulus is a simple causal argument: we are given a phenomenon, and a proposed cause for the phenomenon.

When the author makes a causal argument they are choosing to dismiss three options: (1) that it's not merely a correlation, (2) that it's not reversed causation, (3) that there is not a third factor/mediating variable/different cause. Knowing that the author overlooks these three options, only (E) aligns with our prephrase. The author deliberately ignored the fact that the reduction could be due to a previously high year, and not actually because of the speed limit reduction.

Why the (tempting) wrong answer choices are incorrect according to the two-step test - Is it descriptively accurate? (In other words, does the argument do what the answer says?) Is doing that bad for the argument?:

(A) perhaps the author assumes that highway traffic has remained constant over the 2 years, but not that traffic has increased this year. Fails step 1.

(B) the author never assumes this. But even if so, we don't need to know that the speed limit was obeyed. All the author is saying is that the reduction itself caused the decrease, not the drivers obeying of the law. Fails step 1.

(C) the author is not assuming anything about accidents, only about fatalities. And even if, hypothetically, C said 'fatalities' instead of 'automobile accidents,' it would still be incorrect. The question stem says that we are looking for something that the author takes for granted, but, to the contrary, that is exactly the author's conclusion. Fails step 1.

(D) this is not what the author is assuming. In fact, the author is assuming that everything else stayed consistent (such as the enforcement of laws). Fails step 1.