I look at written explanations first, then watch videos if those don't explain it well. I sometimes jump to the video first if a question was really hard and I just want to watch someone explain it step-by-step. It's oftentimes more useful if the written explanations offer both the explanation given in the video AND a different way of reaching the same conclusion/eliminating the wrong answer choice/selecting the right one. That way there's multiple ways of understanding how to get to the right outcome.

Answer choice D weakens the second theory because it undermines the idea that our understanding of gravity breaks down over large distances. If objects' velocity is directly proportional to their distance from each other, that reaffirms Einstein's general theory of relativity, and undermines the idea that gravity acts in a way inconsistent with our current understanding/predictions. However, unless we're explicitly told that two explanations are BOTH mutually exclusive AND cover the whole universe of possible explanations (and we're not, here), weakening one possible explanation for phenomena does not inherently strengthen another explanation, which is what we're being asked to do here. Only answer choice A directly strengthens the first theory, which is why it's correct.

D is wrong because it only tells us that the situation fails ONE OF the criteria to NOT be legitimate.

Argument: Jest -> NOT legitimate

Proper contrapositive: Legitimate -> NOT a jest

NOT THE CASE: Not a jest -> legitimate

You CANNOT conclude that just because it's not a JEST, it's LEGITIMATE. D only tells us that it's not a jest. It doesn't tell us the offer was otherwise legitimate. Yet, the offer being legitimate is a requirement for the contract being valid. Lea accepting a possibly illegitimate offer still means the contract is not valid.

Answer choice A is incorrect because it just gives support to the arguments made by proponents of harsh punishment. It doesn't directly attack the reasons the author gives for being against harsh punishment, as E does.

The passage has a clear discrepancy between the premises and the conclusion. The conclusion is "those who claim that Shakespeare did not write the plays ... are motivated purely by snobbery." Then as support, it says "many of those who argue that one or another of these aristocrats wrote the plays are the aristocrats' descendants." We have to make an implicit assumption that the so-called snobbery motivating this group stems from the fact that they are descended from the aristocrats who have alternative claims to authorship. But even if we accept that, if it's only MANY and not ALL of the alternative-authorship proponents who have these motivations, the argument is still making a critical error, because what about the minority of people who are not motivated by snobbery (i.e. not descended from aristocrats) but do have legitimate reasons for discrediting Shakespeare's authorship? That's why D is correct and B is not (in addition to the fact that B has a logical contradiction; someone who is motivated "purely" by X by definition cannot be motivated by something else.)

Suggestion for an improvement to the explanation of why B is wrong, which states: "Not supported, because we have no reason to think Author A cares about attention given to masculinity. She never suggests we need more attention to masculinity in our scholarship." I think that's rather overstated.

Passage A itself says: "Since gender relations involved turning to an exploration of the social systems that underlay the relationships of men and women, the shift seemed to many historians to be a retreat from the effort to uncover the history of women per se. The new work took several forms: Articles about men evaluated the role of masculinity in shaping thought and action, and articles about women gave way to explorations of how an imagined domesticity, or separate sphere for women, shaped culture and politics."

While masculinity isn't the main focus of Passage A, I think it's a stretch to say that "we have no reason to think Author A cares about attention given to masculinity." Passage A talks about how the overall shift from the study of women per se towards gender "offers analytic framework within which to analyze social and political structures" which affected both men and women.

I feel like the main issue with B is that it says "equally important role," which would be a stretch as Passage A does not talk about men extensively.

@JY