LSAT 127 – Section 3 – Question 25

LSAT 127 - Section 3 - Question 25

December 2003

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Question
QuickView		 Type Tags Answer
Choices		 Curve Question
Difficulty		 Psg/Game/S
Difficulty		 Explanation
PT127 S3 Q25
+LR
Necessary assumption +NA
Link Assumption +LinkA
A
3%
158
B
24%
162
C
10%
164
D
4%
157
E
58%
166
147
161
174
 +Hardest 146.462 +SubsectionMedium

Chef: This mussel recipe’s first step is to sprinkle the live mussels with cornmeal. The cornmeal is used to clean them out: they take the cornmeal in and eject the sand that they contain. But I can skip this step, because the mussels available at seafood markets are farm raised and therefore do not contain sand.

Summary
The author concludes that he can skip the step of sprinkling live mussells with cornmeal.
Why?
Because mussels available at seafood markets are farm raised and don’t contain sand. Cornmeal is used to clean out sand in mussels.

Notable Assumptions
The author assumes that the mussels he’s about to prepare were obtained at a seafood market.
The author also assumes that there is no other reason cornmeal is used to clean live mussels out besides to get them to eject sand.

A
Cornmeal is not used to clean out farm-raised mussels before they reach seafood markets.
Not necessary, because even if cornmeal is used to clean out farm-raised mussels, the author is only arguing that he doesn’t need to use cornmeal. It may be that many people still use cornmeal when they don’t need to; that doesn’t undermine the argument.
B
Mussels contain no contaminants other than sand.
Not necessary, because other contaminants can be cleaned out by other steps. The author merely believes that he can skip the cornmeal step. But there may be other steps necessary to get rid of other contaminants.
C
Sprinkling the mussels with cornmeal does not affect their taste.
Not necessary, because we have no reason to think taste plays any role in the author’s reasoning. Let’s say cornmeal does affect taste — thta doesn’t suggest a reason the author can’t skip the cornmeal step.
D
The chef’s mussel recipe was written before farm-raised mussels became available.
Not necessary, because even if the recipe was written after farm-raised mussels became available, the recipe might have been assuming people didn’t have ready access to farm-raised mussels. In any case, the author’s argument is that he can skip a step in the recipe, so it’s not clear why he’d have to assume anything about when the recipe was written.
E
The mussels the chef is using for the mussel recipe came from a seafood market.
Necessary, because if it were not true — if the mussels the author is using are NOT from a seafood market — then the author can’t assume that the mussels do not contain sand. In other words, if (E) were not true, the author might not be able to skip the cornmeal step.

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LSAT PrepTest 127 Explanations

Section 1 - Logical Reasoning

Section 2 - Logical Reasoning

Section 3 - Logical Reasoning

Section 4 - Reading Comprehension

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