For me, what made me immediately cross off E was because it is kind of trying to go against something the argument is telling us for certain. The administrator said we will NOT eliminate any faculty member. Nothing else in the stim lets you in on why they made that decision, you can not make assumptions on why they did either. We don't know if they ignored the possibility that the budget could have been reduced by eliminating some faculty & then reducing salary. They could have very well analyzed that possibility and decided to just not go with it, but again, we don't know that, because like many LSAT stims, they purposely leave stuff out to try and trick you into making assumptions that lead you to to the wrong answer choice.

Answer choice B however requires no assumption. The use of the word could here is very important, these little power player words (as Ellen Cassidy calls it) can really trip you up if you do not read them properly. The stim says "it COULD be accomplished" meaning there are possibly other ways and the ways they list are not necessary conditions to solving the problem. If the stim had said "it COULD ONLY be accomplished" then we would be looking at a very different question and B would no longer be the right answer.

If you struggled with this question, I suggest you watch videos on sufficient and necessary assumption and negation. I feel like JY's explanation here was poor and overly complicated, especially if you haven't studied for logic games and have only study for the new format.

I got this question correct and solved it much more simply than JY.

A necessary condition for fuzzy seeds is long stems. But just because you have long stems, does not automatically mean you have fuzzy seeds. Take this for example, A necessary condition of a fire is heat. But just because you fulfill the necessary condition of having heat, does that automatically mean you have a fire? No! You could just have a sunny day.

Now, we also know apart from long stems, specimen X also has curled leaves. Well, we know that a necessary condition for curled leaves is white flowers. So, white flowers are in no matter what. We can not have curled leaves without it.

Here's where you really have to get those negations motors rolling. The stim told us that we can not have Fuzzy seeds and white flowers. Having white flowers, (which is a necessary condition of curled leaves), automatically means that we can not have fuzzy seeds. Slow down and really look at what the stim is telling you. Because having fuzzy seeds would mean you fail a necessary condition of having curled leaves (white flowers), then you know that this automatically means that if curled leaves are in the equation, fuzzy seeds are out.

This is what makes C the correct answer. It has to have white flowers, that is a necessary condition of curled leaves. But it can't have fuzzy seeds, because the stim told us that fuzzy seeds and white flowers can not be together. I hope this helps and was more clear.

Exactly, what a poor answer choice. I truly believe no matter how hard you study and your skill level, there will always be certain wonky questions like these that are just so abysmal.

I just can't get with the use of the word exercise here, even after the explanation.

Thank you for this! I understand it perfectly now!

I usually am pretty strong at these sort of question types, but I just find this one to be ridiculous.

Thank you, much better explanation than the video!!!

I can not be the only one who thinks this explanation video makes zero sense! I chose answer B. My second choice was answer C. Ultimately, I do not understand how both C & B aren't right. Even more worried because he said this one is easy and a freebie. OMG helppppp!