As a further explanation of the point above, this is also talking about an abridgment made in the 17th century and not in our modern world. At the time, actors were actually not given the whole script and actually just their lines with a few words before as a cue in. Just another example of why you can't let your personal experience and knowledge create sub-conscious assumptions that will affect how you answer the question!

I got baited so hard by AC B, in my blind review the alarm bells started going off about the use of the "universal aspect of human culture" as a trap, but I was also so turned off by the use of "all" in C, that I sadly stuck with it.

I really don't understand where this rule " For conditionals, A and B negates to A → /B " came from or how it would be applicable to the actual exam. I understand it intuitively as you're saying that rather than both A and B being true simultaneously, you're positing that /B is a necessary condition of A and thus can't exist together. However, we previously learned about negation of the conjunction "and" in conditional relationships as being A and B → C negated to /C → /A or /B as specified by De Morgan's law. I guess I'm just struggling to see how to tell the difference or when/how to use this new rule in context with a question on the LSAT. Greatly appreciate any comments or help someone could add!

I had similar struggles as you, but it become much clearer to me once I translated the rule as: Vagueness (vagueness in language by company) → /presume (should not presume a deception attempt). This is a much better interpretation of what the actual passage is saying as a whole, at least from my perspective.

Remember the point of the past lessons has been to drill in the idea that these translations are all tools, solely for the end of understanding the question better. If it doesn't aid your understanding, just leave it closer to the form as written like the explanation had and you may be able to better tackle the problem.

I'm answering this just to see if I properly understand it myself. If you choose to use UNLESS as the conditional indicator, then the two ideas would be: IDEA 1 Cannot deliver speech (/SDS) and IDEA 2 Attempt to Assassinate Fails (AAF). You would then select either idea and then negate it as the sufficient clause so this would leave us with either SDS→AAF or /AAF → /SDS. As SDS is already negated by the use of CANNOT.

However, if we were instead to choose CANNOT then our two ideas would be: IDEA 1 Deliver speech (SDS) and IDEA 2 Unless Attempt to Assassinate Fails (/AAF). This then leads us down the exact same pathway with either SDS→AAF or /AAF→/SDS. The key here is realizing that both of the Group 3 and 4 indicators are negating in nature. Therefore, when left with one in the clause and not used as the indicator, it represents /Clause.

I hope this helps and if anyone has any further clarification or corrections, I would love to hear about it.

Update for anyone who views this. I would suggest using Edge as a browser and using the read aloud function (crtl+shift+u). They have a bunch of different voice selections, and it is by far the most natural tts software I’ve ever heard. I highly recommend it as I really need the audio component to help me focus and absorb the content!

Just a note I found helpful when trying to parse some of the more verbose passages. These arguments are necessarily the strongest or without many assumptions, but more so written this way to add complexity to the main point of the exercise, which is to simply identify the premises and conclusions. Therefore its ok, at least from my perspective, to find some of the arguments to not be the most persuasive as that's how many of the actual LSAT questions will be, but instead simply focus on the core exercise of identifying the components of the given argument. Getting into this style of thinking really helped me conquer the more difficult questions for this exercise!