I believe I've identified another reason for eliminating answer B that is--to me at least--much more obvious than the reasoning the explanation offered: the stimulus specifies "such criticism" as that of "a politician criticizing his or her political opponents." Answer B uses as its subject the very general "sincere critics," meaning these critics could be politicians or they could be members of the general public, or pundits. The stimulus only tells us that such criticisms coming from politicians and directed at their opponents are insincere, meaning that there could in fact be sincere criticism of politicians on these grounds coming from another group (e.g. general public, pundits, etc.). Does my logic here hold water?

Couldn't agree more: I know that would perhaps set us up to get the question right, but it would also help to reinforce recognition of the meanings of the terms. After all there is an argument to be made that the differences between answer choices B and D are semantical in nature (it's not lost on me that this is a test which fundamentally focuses on testing knowledge of semantics).

This is similar to how in question five the two possibilities are that "something else is more appropriate analogy for reporting on political campaigns than chess is OR something else ties with chess." The way these answers are written is just highlighting that there are two potentialities in the case of the negation. What the lesson was meant to teach us is that by negating a statement, we should not assume its opposite. In the case of these questions, the lesson tells us not to jump to "large animals move more rapidly than small animals" or "something else is a more appropriate analogy for reporting on political campaigns than chess is" without also recognizing that a tie is possible.

That's just one of two possibilities, hence the "either...or..." It could be that large and small animals can move equally rapidly, but it could also be that large animals can move more rapidly than small animals. Those are the two options if "it is not the case that small animals can move more rapidly than large animals can."

No. Less than half does not include half, whereas "ranges from none to half" could be "half." You could say "less than or equal to half" if you like.

I think I answered my own question in that /M technically means "not a mouse" and not "no mice." And it certainly cannot be argued that anything that is not a mouse is fat.

For question number 4, would it also be correct to end up with M-->/F. As far as I can tell that is logically equivalent to /M-->F. I know that technically speaking "not fat" is a different superset from "fat," so this answer would involve changing the necessary as opposed to the sufficient condition. That being said, I cannot find a logical flaw in answering /M-->F, which also has the added benefit of translating more clearly to english. Please let me know if you see any issues here!

Totally agree. I came to the same conclusion. I don't think you interpreted it incorrectly. I'm hoping something this opaque won't show up on a test. One thing I will say is that even though I came to the same conclusion as you with respect to “the rights of future generations to have their artistic heritage preserved vs. the right of living individuals to have their artistic heritage preserved," I was uncomfortable with my interpretation because I didn't understand how or why anyone would ever claim that future generations took precedence in this comparison. Obviously we do not have the context of the surrounding sentences, but I'd say the only logical argument for the "correct" answer 7sage gives us, is that if you think of that argument logically, it does make less sense than their answer. I still don't understand how we are supposed to make the leap to the right of people currently living to "do things that would damage the artistic heritage of future generations," but it certainly makes more logical sense as a claim than the one you and I arrived at. Sorry...no real advice or insight here. Kind of just agreeing.

Am I crazy or is there a typo in question 2:

It currently reads "The composition of seawater changes more slowly than it does in interglacial periods."

I'm fairly adept when it comes to grammar and it seems to me that the "than it does" is not only extraneous but also grammatically, or at least syntactically, incorrect. I understand that the point of the question is that the comparison between glacial and interglacial periods is implied, not explicit, but it seems to me that someone left in the "than it does" from the explicit version when drafting the implied version. Shouldn't the sentence read "The composition of seawater changes more slowly in interglacial periods."? The "than it does" makes the sentence incomprehensible.

If I'm making a mistake, I'd greatly appreciate it if someone could explain to me what I'm missing.