Reading errors to avoid

runiggyrun

This week I had an unpleasant "first" in eternal battle against the LSAT LG ogre. I missed an ORIENTATION question on the second game of PT 69. A game rated one star!
I missed it because the board involved dishes on Top, Middle and Bottom shelves and the questions were worded like this:
A. Bottom shelf: dish 2 and dish 3
Middle shelf: dish 4 and dish 5
Top shelf: dish 6 and dish 1
I stared at the correct answer in disbelief for a good minute, before I realized that I didn't actually READ the darn answer choices. I just ASSUMED that the top shelf would be, you know, on top.

Which brings me to the importance of always reading the question and the answers, even when you sort of know what they are going to ask.

And I'd like to throw together a list of other tricky questions I've encountered over the last few months, so nobody makes the same mistakes I did.

For games (in addition to the example above):
a. If X is in group/position A, then for how many OTHER elements is the order/distribution known
b. paying attention to the difference between " a complete and accurate list of the people who could do X" and "a complete and accurate list of the people any of whom could do X" and variations thereof (PT 69 had one of those as well).
c. rules like "N can be NEITHER first NOR last"
d. In rules, notice the difference between "a spot" and "at least one spot" between A and B
e. In rules, pay attention to what it means when "A was two years before B" or "X finished two spots before Y" (A_B and X_Y respectively; it's tempting to assume two slots in between).
f. Unless the game tells you otherwise, don't assume that groups/positions can't be empty or that all elements have to be used, or used only once.

For LR:
a. A couple of "dialog" questions ask about something that Selma and Louise are committed to AGREEING on. Easy to miss, since the vast majority ask about disagreements.
b. Pesky EXCEPT questions (especially "all must be false except", or disguised ones like "which of the following does least to help reconcile", "which of the following does not provide evidence to strengthen the scientist's argument" and so on.

Do you have any other tricky wordings you've found that you'd like to add to the list? Or tips on how you make sure you READ and not assume?

stepharizona

Oh a great list @runiggyrun ! I will have to go through my questions log to see the once I can find. The two you mentioned for LR tend to be the ones that I fall prey to the most often. But I am sure there are a few other ones!