JY Indirectly addresses your questions from 22:25 to about 26:00

"How are you concluding that the assumption here is that the only reason Billy rides his bike is for exercise, and NOT that biking is the only form of exercise that Billy does????"

Neither of those assumptions are made: "X probably did Y for Z" does not indicate that the only reason X used Y was for Z, nor that Y is the only way X chooses to/can get Z.

If I say, "Corrina probably used chocolate chips for making cookies," I am not necessarily saying that Corrina only used chocolate chips for one thing ever, just that it is likely she used them for making cookies. I am also not saying that Corrina could not ever make cookies without chocolate chips or only ever chose to make cookies via using chocolate chips, again just that she likely used chocolate chips in her cookie-making.

Returning to the original argument: The archaeologist is supposing that the grass and lichen found were used for an alternative purpose than making fires for illumination and warmth. The reason he supposes this is because grass and lichen, when burned together, do the jobs of illuminating and warming less effectively than other materials, such as wood. In addition, they also produce a great deal of smoke, which would also make them less desirable to burn compared to wood or other materials; Neanderthals probably would not have enjoyed spending night after night sleeping next to a fire emitting loads of smoke in their faces. If other, better materials were available to burn, why would the Neanderthals ever choose to burn grass and lichen? The archaeologist considers the qualities and properties of grass and lichen, particularly the smoke quality, and concludes Neanderthals likely burned grass and lichen for preserving their meats via smoking them. A strengthens this argument by indicating that other fireplaces were found nearby that used other materials better for illuminating and warming. This outrightly indicates that the Neanderthals had multiple options as to what to burn and that some of those options were better for illumination/warming than grass and lichen, which is one of the archaeologist's core assumptions. Here is a quaint way of construing A: "Neanderthals had a living room fireplace where it was found wood was used and a kitchen fireplace where grass and lichen were used." B weakens the argument by putting forward that the only thing the Neanderthals had to burn was grass and lichen, thus there is no reason to suppose it was primarily used for alternative purposes to staying warm/illumination at night; the Neanderthals had to tolerate the smoke and get by with less warmth and light because grass and lichen was all they had to burn.

Say I see a person's shower/bath. Say I see a bottle of Dawn (dishwashing soap) in the shower, but that is the only item in it. Say I conclude that the person probably uses that Dawn for bathing pets.

(A) Good quality Shampoo, Conditioner, and Body Wash were all found in another shower in the same house.

(B) The only type of cleaning product/soap this person has is Dawn (dishwashing soap).

Say I see a person riding a bicycle. Say I conclude the person is probably riding the bicycle for exercise.

(B) Then you weaken my argument by saying that the only means of transportation that person has is that bicycle. Thus I can't neatly conclude it is probably for exercise.

(A) Then you strengthen my argument by saying that you saw that person driving their car to get to their job earlier that day.

Ignorance is not bliss.

SA: A. Regardless of what the premises state, every unknown unknown which is known is actually a known unknown which is unknown.

SA: B. Any thing we do not understand and do not know of that we become aware of is truly only a thing we are aware of and do not understand that we were unaware of.

Going with A

You don't want to lose significant time cancelling out wrong answers on a question you've already gotten correct but feel tentative about. That would be the best way to increase your confidence in your choices, ruling out the wrong options, but RC usually challenges takers to move quickly and cover a lot of ground. Instead, you can find more confidence in your selecting ability by going over your thought processes on RC questions during review. Explanation videos can be great for this. If you find that JY or another LSAT expert got the correct answer by thinking how you did, more or less, you can reassure yourself that the level of doubt you have mid-exam when answering RC questions is inconsistent with the degree of doubt you should feel. Just knowing that, despite how you may feel, you know from experience that you actually know what you're doing can embolden you during a section's challenges.

A furthers the connection between Han Purple and the Common Type of White Glass. The premises tell us that the first connection is ingredients and the second is similar production methods. A gives us a third connection--location. A doesn't just counter a possible objection, it operates as a third premise akin to the first two in support of the conclusion.

C does not further the connection between Han Purple and the Common Type of White Glass. C merely states that very few people knew how to make Han Purple. All we can infer from this are a few strange scenarios that do not really strengthen or weaken the argument. For instance, if the production methods of the Common Type of White glass made by presumably many workers was known to those many workers, and our arguer is proposing that Han Purple came as a fortuitous accident during Common Type of White glass-making, C proposes that the accident was not only quite rare but that communication about it was scarce amongst the workers or kept secret or regarded as disinteresting to most workers. As for your interpretation of what C objects to, bear in mind that from the stimulus we have no reason to presume the means by which the Common Type of White Glass was made is in question, only the synthesization of Han Purple during that era is a mystery. As such, we could not need to disprove an objection such as, "Han Purple actually preceded White Glass production there and in fact White Glass production was an accidental consequence of Han Purple making." This seems very unlikely to be tenable just based on the stimulus unaltered as Han Purple is the mystery while the Common Type of White Glass is seemingly well understood.

In a way, yes, it is different from A because when we negate it, and say that a lot of people knew how to make Han purple, that negation doesn't clearly weaken the argument. As for the psychological approach to Strengthening questions: Reserving negation strategy for necessary assumption questions seems effective. For Strengthening questions, looking for what bolsters the bridge between Premise and Conclusion works well.

If you're short on time, Efficiency is your best friend. You want to go for the low-hanging fruit/the points easiest to get/most bang for your buck. There are 7-8 flaw questions per Logical Reasoning section. Make sure you are great at spotting flaws in arguments. Do 10 easy LR questions in a 10 minute drill, or 5 hard questions in 10 minutes. For Reading Comp, you can drill one passage and its 6-8 questions in less than 10 minutes. If you are taking before August, very most Logic Games take less than 10 minutes to drill. After a while of even just this drilling, you can hone in on what your weaknesses are so that you aren't wasting time on something you're already very good at/getting diminishing returns from.

Try to use older PTs for drilling if you intend to drill (say for rapid LG improvement) and saving newer PTs (85+) exclusively for use as full practice tests as your exam date nears.

Try taking an older PT (55 or at least a timed LR section from an older PT. The most efficient way for you to practice will be contingent upon what your specific strengths and weaknesses are at the moment, and those will only be apparent if you test your skills as they are now. 7sage Analytics page can tell you, after you've taken several practice exams, which LR question types you are most and least proficient at so that you can be more efficient.(/p)

Yes. Old timed practice tests can be very useful. Ultimately it is better to take newer tests as you near your test date, but further out the old tests are great material in the meantime. This post may be of interest to you based upon your questions: https://www.reddit.com/r/LSAT/comments/71zteo/hardest_most_difficult_lsat_sections_ever_listed/

Generally people advise saving very most of the more recent exams (70s-90s) for the final months as your exam approaches and using the first 50 exams for drills/full PTs earlier on. At minimum don't drill content from the most recent 10 exams and save them to take as full length practice tests.

LSAT writers are very good at verbal trickery. They deliberately add or subtract modifiers in certain spots and sometimes one small modifier, one singular word, is the only reason a given answer choice isn't the correct answer. Watching JY in explanation, I noticed that he puts his pencil/cursor over each word as he reads the stimulus and each answer choice. Since using that technique myself, I find I rarely misread because I'm forcing myself to "touch" each word instead of glossing over a sentence trying to just get the gist. Ironically, such fast paced reading ends up costing more time and accuracy because, as you pointed out, people miss crucial words like "some" or "several".

First off, it is unfair to yourself to contemplate concluding you are not cut out for the LSAT/this path merely based on such a small sample size/instance. August is a while from now and it sounds as though you've already made significant progress by thoroughly familiarizing yourself with fundamentals. From what I hear/see, most students see significant improvement through their first 12-20 Practice Tests.

Secondly. . Here is some potentially unorthodox LSAT advice that could be encouraging. . . Not a fan of untimed sections or blind review (or 36 question LR sections if that is not supposed to say 26). Untimed sections have this way of lulling testers to sleep, whereas timed sections keep the attention & focus of test takers so that they stay "in the rhythm of the LSAT". As for Blind Review, that may work well for others, but I think it is more efficient to go over questions knowing what was right and wrong before inundating your mind with additional thought processes you didn't have when you first engaged with the problems in question.

Ultimately grappling with actual questions under time constraints and carefully evaluating your performances is the best pathway to improve at the LSAT, and it sounds as though you haven't yet seen what you can do by utilizing that pathway. The comprehension and reasoning skills measured by the LSAT can all be learned and mastered by most anyone, though certain attributes like verbal fluency affect how quickly a given person grasps those skills.

And remember that the LSAT's writers spend hours upon hours creating and refining their questions, all for takers to endeavor to solve them in typically less than 2 minutes a pop. Here is what former LSAT-question writer Stephen Harris, who wrote hundreds of LSAT questions, said in an interview:

"...You can spend a lot of time staring at a blank screen before fingers hit keyboard. I found that it was hard to average one LSAT item a day when I was writing items as fast as I could. And some items are definitely harder to write than others."

For MSS questions, take the stimulus slow and ensure comprehension. The argument, premises, the conclusion--for MSS, all of these are TRUE. The correct answer choice must be found by process of elimination, skip pre-phrasing and let the correct AC feed you/give you clues. Eliminate incorrect answers as you search for whichever AC naturally flows from the stimulus. You could also think about the correct AC on MSS as a puzzle piece that fits with the stimulus whole. MSS are not quite inference or MBT questions but the process is fairly similar. Four of the answers will not naturally flow from the stimulus, only one will.

Here is a brand new, fake, imperfect MSS Q:

"Storm Chaser: The Fujita Scale and Enhanced Fujita Scale are ranking scales that rely upon the level of destruction a given Tornado leaves in its wake to evaluate Tornado strength. The severity of damage caused by a Tornado is investigated and then meteorologists, based upon these assessments, make their classification. But even the newer Enhanced Fujita Scale relies too heavily on crime-scene-like analysis of apparent structural damage as it doesn't properly take into account live radar-measured wind speeds. Thus, the 2013 El Reno Tornado should not have been classified as a mere EF3 and instead should be regarded as a maximally powerful EF5.

A. Users of the Enhanced Fujita scale cannot make determinations about Tornado strength utilizing wind speed estimates.

B. Looking at live, radar-measured wind speeds is not as reliable a way to assess Tornado strength as evaluating apparent structural damage.

C. The 2013 El Reno Tornado did not cause EF5 structural damage.

D. The Fujita scale was a more effective means of calculating wind speeds.

E. It would be reasonable to upgrade the 2013 El Reno Tornado to a F4 classification."

Spoiler/Correct answer: The University of Oklahoma's RaXPol mobile Doppler weather radar, positioned at a nearby overpass, measured winds preliminarily analyzed as in excess of 296 mph (476 km/h). These winds are considered the second-highest ever measured worldwide, just shy of the 302 ± 22 mph (486 ± 35 km/h) recorded during the 1999 Bridge Creek–Moore tornado.[22][23] On August 30, the National Weather Service office in Norman once again revised the intensity of the El Reno tornado. Keli Pirtle, a Public Affairs worker at the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration, stated that, "despite the radar-measured wind speeds, the survey team did not find damage that would support a rating higher than EF3. While the wind measurements from the mobile radars are considered reliable, NWS policy for determining EF-ratings is based on surveys of ground damage."[21] The lack of EF5 damage was likely a result of the rural nature of the area, as the sub-vortices that contained the EF5 wind speeds did not impact any structures.[28][29] Rick Smith, the warning coordination meteorologist at the National Weather Service Weather Forecast Office in Norman, stated that this tornado was among a "super-rare" category within the EF5 rating. Smith also stated that it was fortunate the tornado did not track into more densely populated areas, particularly those within the Oklahoma City metropolitan area, "this would have been … I don't even want to imagine what it would have been."[25] William Hooke, a senior policy fellow at the American Meteorological Society stated that, "[Oklahoma City] dodged a bullet...You lay that path over Oklahoma City, and you have devastation of biblical proportions."[27]Alongside rush hour traffic, thousands of residents in Oklahoma City attempted to outrun the storm by taking to the roads in an attempt to drive out of the tornado's projected path. By attempting to escape the storm by vehicle, in direct contrast to the recommended plan of action, residents put themselves at great risk from the storm; had the tornado maintained itself and passed over the congested freeways, more than 500 lives could have been lost.[8]The tornado killed four storm chasers (three professional and one amateur), the first known deaths in the history of storm chasing.[3] The National Weather Service referred to the tornado as "the most dangerous tornado in storm observing history."[7]

(Only 11 days after the EF5 Moore tornado, the El Reno tornado, measuring 2.6 miles wide, struck central Oklahoma. It was categorized as an EF3, but its width was the largest ever recorded and its wind speeds were the second highest ever recorded. It killed nine people in their cars and caused widespread flash flooding that killed 14 more.)