LSAT 144 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q7

LR Question 7 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Critic: The recent biography of Shakespeare does not…

QUESTION TYPE: Sufficient Assumption

CONCLUSION: The biography doesn’t explain what’s interesting about Shakespeare.

REASONING: The biography doesn’t explain what made Shakespeare different from his peers.

ANALYSIS: The first sentence is the conclusion. If you had trouble identifying this, notice that the conclusion is an opinion. Any idea about whether something is ‘good’ or ‘bad’ will usually be the author’s opinion. The word “but” in the final sentence indicates evidence for the conclusion.

As with all sufficient assumption questions, there is a gap. In this case, a diagram doesn’t help. Just focus: we know exactly one negative fact about the book. The book didn’t explain what made Shakespeare different.

We want to link that to the idea that the book didn’t explain why Shakespeare was interesting. If Shakespeare was interesting because he was different, then the single fact proves the conclusion. The thing that made Shakespeare different is also what made him interesting.

___________

1. This might excuse the author’s failure to tell us what made Shakespeare different. But it doesn’t tell us whether the biography told us what made Shakespeare interesting.
2. Shakespeare wasn’t the average man. I have no idea what this answer is supposed to tell us.
3. This might show that the biography should have explained why Shakespeare was different. But it doesn’t link being different to being interesting.
4. At best this shows that the biography wasn’t a good biography. A bad biography might still manage to explain why Shakespeare was interesting.
5. CORRECT. This shows that what made Shakespeare different is what made him interesting. So if the biography fails to explain different, then it also fails to explain interesting.