LSAC LSAC Certifications LSAT-TEST Questions & Answers

• Question 551:

  Four boys -- Fred, Juan, Marc, and Paul -- and three girls -- Nita, Rachel, and Trisha -- will be assigned to

  a row of five adjacent lockers, numbered consecutively 1 through 5, arranged along a straight wall. The

  following conditions govern the assignment of lockers to the seven children:

  Each locker must be assigned to either one or two children, and each child must be assigned to exactly

  one locker.

  Each shared locker must be assigned to one girl and one boy.

  Juan must share a locker, but Rachel cannot share a locker.

  Nita's locker cannot be adjacent to Trisha's locker. Fred must be assigned to locker 3

  If lockers 1 and 2 are each assigned to one boy and are not shared lockers, then locker 4 must be

  assigned to

  A. Juan

  B. Paul

  C. Rachel

  D. Juan and Nita

  E. Marc and Trisha

  Correct Answer: C

  So lockers 1 and 2 go to boys, yes? And they're not shared? So where--you as a good Logic Games detective must ask are the shared lockers? The only way to insert two non-adjacent (Rule 4) shared lockers is to use lockers 3 and 5. The former is always Fred's, so the latter will be Juan's.

• Question 552:

  Four boys -- Fred, Juan, Marc, and Paul -- and three girls -- Nita, Rachel, and Trisha -- will be assigned to

  a row of five adjacent lockers, numbered consecutively 1 through 5, arranged along a straight wall. The

  following conditions govern the assignment of lockers to the seven children:

  Each locker must be assigned to either one or two children, and each child must be assigned to exactly

  one locker.

  Each shared locker must be assigned to one girl and one boy.

  Juan must share a locker, but Rachel cannot share a locker.

  Nita's locker cannot be adjacent to Trisha's locker. Fred must be assigned to locker 3

  Once Rachel has been assigned to a locker, what is the maximum number of different lockers each of

  which could be the locker to which Juan is assigned?

  A. one

  B. two

  C. three

  D. four

  E. five

  Correct Answer: C

  This question has a slightly more theoretical bent; maybe it'll help to do some sketching, maybe not. Once Rachel gets her locker assignment -- and it doesn't say which, so we have to assume that the location is irrelevant -- there will be a maximum number of possibilities for Juan. What is it? Well, suppose we give Rachel locker 1. We would have to give Juan and his partner either locker 2, 4, or 5. (Fred, remember, is always the occupant of locker 3). It looks like the number we want is three. And indeed, no matter which locker is Rachel's, three possibilities exist for Juan and his locker partner. C.is correct.

• Question 553:

  Four boys -- Fred, Juan, Marc, and Paul -- and three girls -- Nita, Rachel, and Trisha -- will be assigned to

  a row of five adjacent lockers, numbered consecutively 1 through 5, arranged along a straight wall. The

  following conditions govern the assignment of lockers to the seven children:

  Each locker must be assigned to either one or two children, and each child must be assigned to exactly

  one locker.

  Each shared locker must be assigned to one girl and one boy.

  Juan must share a locker, but Rachel cannot share a locker.

  Nita's locker cannot be adjacent to Trisha's locker. Fred must be assigned to locker 3.

  If the four boys are assigned to consecutively numbered lockers and Juan is assigned to locker 5, then

  which one of the following is a complete and accurate list of lockers each of which CANNOT be a shared

  locker?

  A. locker 2

  B. locker 4

  C. locker I,locker 2

  D. locker 1,locker 4 E. locker 2,locker 4

  Correct Answer: D

  If all of our boys are occupying consecutive lockers and Juan takes locker 5, then clearly 2 through 5 will be assigned to boys--meaning (lest we forget) that Rachel is forced to take locker 1. (Remember, she has a locker to herself.) Fred's always got locker 3, so Marc and Paul will take lockers 2 and 4, in either order. Don't forget Juan's locker partner.

• Question 554:

  Four boys -- Fred, Juan, Marc, and Paul -- and three girls -- Nita, Rachel, and Trisha -- will be assigned to

  a row of five adjacent lockers, numbered consecutively 1 through 5, arranged along a straight wall. The

  following conditions govern the assignment of lockers to the seven children:

  Each locker must be assigned to either one or two children, and each child must be assigned to exactly

  one locker.

  Each shared locker must be assigned to one girl and one boy.

  Juan must share a locker, but Rachel cannot share a locker.

  Nita's locker cannot be adjacent to Trisha's locker. Fred must be assigned to locker 3.

  If Trisha is assigned to locker 3 and Marc alone is assigned to locker 1, then which one of the following

  must be true?

  A. Juan is assigned to locker 4.

  B. Juan is assigned to locker 5.

  C. Paul is assigned to locker 2.

  D. Rachel is assigned to locker 2.

  E. Rachel is assigned to locker 5.

  Correct Answer: B

  As soon as you see that we're given new information -- and two pieces, yet! -- you should think to set up a little sketch for the purpose of this question, adding what you already know to what you're told. We see that one of the shared lockers must be #3.

• Question 555:

  Four boys -- Fred, Juan, Marc, and Paul -- and three girls-- Nita, Rachel, and Trisha -- will be assigned to a

  row of five adjacent lockers, numbered consecutively 1 through 5, arranged along a straight wall. The

  following conditions govern the assignment of lockers to the seven children:

  Each locker must be assigned to either one or two children, and each child must be assigned to exactly

  one locker.

  Each shared locker must be assigned to one girl and one boy.

  Juan must share a locker, but Rachel cannot share a locker.

  Nita's locker cannot be adjacent to Trisha's locker. Fred must be assigned to locker 3.

  Which one of the following is a complete and accurate list of the children who must be among those

  assigned to shared lockers?

  A. Fred, Juan

  B. Juan, Paul

  C. Juan, Marc, Paul

  D. Juan, Marc, Trisha

  E. Juan, Nita, Trisha

  Correct Answer: E

  Piece of cake given our initial deductive work. Among those for-sure paired up are Juan (Rule 3), as well as Nita and Trisha (since we need two girls for the two sharings, and according to Rule 3, it ain't gonna be Rachel). Who is the other boy for a shared locker? No way to tell.

• Question 556:

  The judgment that an artist is great always rests on assessments of the work the artist has produced. A series of great works is the only indicator of greatness. Therefore, to say that an artist is great is just to summarize the quality of his or her known works, and the artist's greatness can provide no basis for predicting the quality of the artist's unknown or future works.

  Which one of the following contains questionable reasoning most similar to that in the argument above?

  A. The only way of knowing whether someone has a cold is to observe symptoms. Thus, when a person is said to have a cold, this means only that he or she has displayed the symptoms of a cold, and no prediction about the patient's future symptoms is justified.

  B. Although colds are very common, there are some people who never or only very rarely catch colds. Clearly these people must be in some way physiologically different from people who catch colds frequently.

  C. Someone who has a cold is infected by a cold virus. No one can be infected by the same cold virus twice, but there are indefinitely many different cold viruses. Therefore, it is not possible to predict from a person's history of infection how susceptible he or she will be in the future.

  D. The viruses that cause colds are not all the same, and they differ in their effects. Therefore, although it may be certain that a person has a cold, it is impossible to predict how the cold will progress.

  E. Unless a person displays cold symptoms, it cannot properly be said that the person has a cold. But each of the symptoms of a cold is also the symptom of some other disease. Therefore, one can never be certain that a person has a cold.

  Correct Answer: A

  The length of the stimulus and choices may be daunting, and so may their format, but if you seek to reduce everything to essentials, the right answer is right around the corner. The stimulus asserts, in two sentences that work as one, that a necessary condition of an artist's greatness is the knowledge of a series of great works. From that assertion, the stimulus draws a two-part conclusion, to wit, that: (1) "greatness" is merely an assessment based on an artist's works that are known, and hence that (2) one cannot predict the quality of unknown or future work based on the artist's "greatness. "Whether or not this seems reasonable to you (and it shouldn't, since the stem does identify the logic as "questionable"), we need to seek a two-part conclusion, part of which is a prediction.

• Question 557:

  Telephone companies are promoting "voice mail" as an alternative to the answering machine. By recording messages from callers when a subscriber does not have access to his or her telephone, voice mail provides a service similar to that of an answering machine. The companies promoting this service argue that it will soon make answering machines obsolete, since it is much more convenient, more flexible, and less expensive than an answering machine.

  Which one of the following, if true, most calls into question the argument made by the companies promoting voice mail?

  A. Unlike calls made to owners of answering machines, all telephone calls made to voice-mail subscribers are completed, even if the line called is in use at the time of the call.

  B. The surge in sales of answering machines occurred shortly after they were first introduced to the electronics market.

  C. Once a telephone customer decides to subscribe to voice mail, that customer can cancel the service at any time,

  D. Answering machines enable the customer to hear who is calling before the customer decides whether to answer the telephone, a service voice mail does not provide.

  E. The number of messages a telephone answering machine can record is limited by the length of the magnetic tape on which calls are recorded.

  Correct Answer: D

  Certainly the companies promoting voice mail have a vested interest in making it sound as good as possible. Their pitch includes greater convenience, more flexibility, and lower cost than the garden-variety answering machine. One need not jump through hoops to weaken an argument like this--pointing out a factor that the voice mail folks overlook (conveniently, no doubt) that favors the answering machine over voice mail would be enough. The factor in option [Answering machines enable the customer to...] serves perfectly well. A huge benefit of answering machines (as we suspect most of us have discovered by now) is the ability they afford us to "screen" our calls. They weren't invented for that purpose, but people certainly figured out pretty quickly how to use them that way. Option [Answering machines enable the customer to...] therefore cites a function of answering machines that voice mail can't match, and to the extent that that function is desirable (which isn't so hard to imagine), we'd be less likely to believe the prediction that voice mail will render the answering machine obsolete.

• Question 558:

  When investigators discovered that the director of a local charity had repeatedly overstated the number of people his charity had helped, the director accepted responsibility for the deception. However, the investigators claimed that journalists were as much to blame as the director was for inflating the charity's reputation, since they had naively accepted what the director told them, and simply reported as fact the numbers he gave them.

  Which one of the following principles, if valid, most helps to justify the investigators' claim?

  A. Anyone who works for a charitable organization is obliged to be completely honest about the activities of that organization.

  B. Anyone who knowingly aids a liar by trying to conceal the truth from others is also a liar.

  C. Anyone who presents as factual a story that turns out to be untrue without first attempting to verify that story is no less responsible for the consequences of that story than anyone else is.

  D. Anyone who lies in order to advance his or her own career is more deserving of blame than someone who lies in order to promote a good cause.

  E. Anyone who accepts responsibility for a wrongful act that he or she committed is less deserving of blame than someone who tries to conceal his or her own wrongdoing.

  Correct Answer: C

  The director of the charity repeatedly lied about the number of people helped by the charity, but when confronted by the investigators, accepted responsibility for the deception. But the investigators oddly blame the journalists as much as the director for misrepresenting the charity's beneficence, because they unquestioningly printed the numbers they were told. The journalists didn't fabricate the story -- they merely printed the numbers they were given. It seems that the investigators believe that printing erroneous information without checking it is on a par with making up that info in the first place. The principle in option [Anyone who presents as factual a story that...] embodies that notion, and thus supports the investigators' claim. The description in the first part of the choice clearly applies to the journalists; the phrase "no less responsible" in the middle matches up perfectly with "as much to blame as..."; and "than anyone else" clearly includes the director. Option [Anyone who presents as factual a story that...] hits on all cylinders, while the other choices stray from or distort the scope of the situation.

• Question 559:

  In a recent study, a group of subjects had their normal daily caloric intake increased by 25 percent. This increase was entirely in the form of alcohol. Another group of similar subjects had alcohol replace nonalcoholic sources of 25 percent of their normal daily caloric intake. All subjects gained body fat over the course of the study, and the amount of body fat gained was the same for both groups.

  Which one of the following is most strongly supported by the information above?

  A. Alcohol is metabolized more quickly by the body than are other foods or drinks.

  B. In the general population, alcohol is the primary cause of gains in body fat.

  C. An increased amount of body fat does not necessarily imply a weight gain.

  D. Body fat gain is not dependent solely on the number of calories one consumes.

  E. The proportion of calories from alcohol in a diet is more significant for body fat gain than are the total calories from alcohol.

  Correct Answer: D

  This is an Inference question. Remember to stick close to the passage. In this passage the crucial thing to note is that one group increased its caloric intake by 25%, all of it alcohol. The other groupreplaced25% of its caloric intake with alcohol. And yet both groups gained equivalent amounts of body fat. Based on this information, you can infer that body fat gain is not dependent solely on the number of calories one consumes. If that were the only factor affecting body fat gain, then we would expect the two groups to have gained different amounts of body fat, since they had different caloric intakes. But they were equivalent, so we can infer that option [Body fat gain is not dependent solely...] on is correct.

• Question 560:

  Tina: For centuries oceans and human eccentricity have been linked in the literary and artistic imagination. Such linkage is probably due to the European Renaissance practice of using ships as asylums for the socially undesirable. Sergio: No. Oceans have always been viewed as mysterious and unpredictable -qualities that people have invariably associated with eccentricity.

  Tina's and Sergio's statements lend the most support to the claim that they disagree about which one of the following statements?

  A. Eccentric humans were considered socially undesirable during the European Renaissance.

  B. Oceans have always been viewed as mysterious and unpredictable.

  C. The linkage between oceans and eccentricity explains the European Renaissance custom of using ships as asylums.

  D. People have never attributed the same qualities to oceans and eccentrics.

  E. The linkage between oceans and eccentricity predates the European Renaissance.

  Correct Answer: E

  What's the point at issue between Tina and Sergio? Tina senses a literary and artistic link between oceans and eccentricity, and proposes that the Renaissance-era "Ship of Fools" practice is probably the cause. Nope, says Sergio: From time immemorial, the oceans have been perceived as mysterious and unpredictable, and that explains their association with eccentricity. So both accept the connection between oceans and eccentricity, but Tina sees the cause of the link in how a particular culture at a particular timeused the ocean, while to Sergio it's the nature of the ocean itself that's responsible. Note the extreme words that Sergio employs: "always" and "invariably." These words leave little doubt that his time frame for the phenomenon stretches far beyond Tina's explanation, and option [The linkage between oceans and...] captures the dispute perfectly: Tina believes the linkage dates from the European Renaissance (that's the point in time at which she places its cause), while Sergio believes it goes back much further than that.