LSAT 146 | Section 2 | Logical Reasoning: Q10

LR Question 10 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: One who has borrowed an item from someone and…

QUESTION TYPE: Principle – Justify

PRINCIPLE: Not too hard to return on time AND no permission to return late AND promise to return by a certain date ➞ should return on time

ANALYSIS: This is a fairly straightforward principle. If the three sufficient conditions above are true, you should return on time. That’s it, that’s all we can conclude.

What if we’re missing one of the three conditions? Well, then we can’t prove anything, because the sufficient condition is actually all three of them, together – they’re joined by “and” statements.

So, the real difficulty here is finding an answer that matches. There are three wrong answers each missing one of the sufficient conditions. You have to find the one that has all three.

___________

1. The principle is about whether or not we should return something on time, or late. It has nothing to say about returning an item early: presumably that is ok in most cases.
2. This is close, it has two of the three sufficient conditions. But, one of the sufficient conditions was “if it would not be difficult”, and this answer says it would be difficult.
3. This has two of the three sufficient conditions. But one of the conditions was “the person did not give permission for a late return”, and this answer says there is permission for a late return.
4. Like B and C, this has two of the three sufficient conditions. But, it is missing the third: there had to be a promise to return by tomorrow. Since there was no such promise here, we have no basis for concluding Yesenia should return the computer tomorrow.
5. CORRECT. Here we have all three sufficient conditions: Oliver promised to bring back the guitar, it would be easy, and he doesn’t have permission for a late return. So, according to the principle he should return it. Note that “easy to return” is the same thing as the “not difficult to return” used in the stimulus. Sometimes LSAC will use different language that has the same meaning.