LSAT 72, Logic Game 1, Question 5, LSATHacks

This question asks us which answer will fully determine the order of the reports. 

I didn’t know how to approach this question. But I looked through the answers to see which ones were harder to do.

I’ll explain what I mean by harder. The rules says sports has to be last, for example. So if an answer places sports last (like D does) then that answer is satisfying a rule, and therefore it is easy to do. 

An answer like E is a bit harder, because it places something last that isn’t sports. 

B and C are not hard, because they both place national first, and national has to be first. 

A is hard. The rules say international is before weather. So if international is last in the first group, then weather must not be in the first group. Also, since Sports must go last, placing international last forces Sports into the second group. 

So using two separate rules to measure this answer choice, A is hard.
(The rules are: “S last” and “I before W”.)

Applying the hard/easy test, we’re down to A and E to try first. Let’s try A. I’m going to draw it step by step:

Place international last in group 1:

This forces Sports to be last in group 2:

Weather also has to be in group 2, since weather has to go after international if they’re in the same group:

National always has to go first, so national goes in group 1:

This leaves T to go second in group 1:

So, A is CORRECT; placing International last in group 1 determines the entire order. 

But let’s make sure that E doesn’t also fully determine everything. I do check the other plausible answer just to make sure I didn’t make a mistake.

Placing weather last in the first segment does force Sports to be last in the second segment:

But that’s all we get. We can put international, traffic and national wherever we want, as long as we put national first in the group it’s in. There are no rules restricting traffic and international now that weather is last. In fact, placing weather last means that answer E is partly an “easy” answer to do.

If I correctly predict hard answers and think one solves the question, then I don’t test the other answers. There’s no need.

I already partly tested them by checking that they obeyed a rule. There’s never going to be a crazy, Rube-Golberg-esque reason why obeying a rule forces everything else to fall into place.

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