LSAT 151 | Section 4 | Logical Reasoning: Q5

LR Question 5 Explanation

QUESTION TEXT: Heavy tapestry fabrics are appropriate only for use in…

QUESTION TYPE: Most Strongly Supported

FACTS:

1. Heavy tapestry appropriate ➞ need laundering
2. Clothing ➞ needs laundering
3. Swags and balloon valences, used in windows, don’t need much laundering.

ANALYSIS: You can take the contrapositive of the first statement, and join it with the second:

Clothing ➞ needs laundering ➞ heavy tapestry appropriate

Basically, don’t wear a medieval tapestry as clothing. But, it may make sense to put a tapestry on your window as a valence.

Now, the above is a conditional statement, meaning it is 100% true. So we can say with certainty that clothing is not appropriate for being a heavy tapestry. Technically, however, we can’t say clothing fabric is never used (badly) as a heavy tapestry. People can do stupid, inappropriate things. The right answer plays on this distinction and talks about something that is fairly likely, but not 100% supported. On MSS questions it’s rare to be able to prove the answer 100%. It’s fine to have some wiggle room: this isn’t a must be true question.

___________

1. This doesn’t follow. We know heavy tapestry can be used in windows (i.e. swags). But some other types of fabric might also be appropriate in swags. The fact that something is appropriate for swags doesn’t mean nothing else is.
2. The stimulus said that appropriate applications include “swags and balloon valences”. The word “include” suggests there are other applications, so it’s not supported to say that only swags or balloon valences are appropriate.
3. This is actually exactly the same concept as B, with different words. Two identical answers can’t both be right.
    
   The problem here is that the author only listed swags and valences as examples of places where tapestries were appropriate. But there could be other places they’re appropriate.
   For example, tapestries are often simply hung on walls as art!
4. CORRECT. This is probable, though not certain. That’s good enough for a most strongly supported answer. I explained more above, but basically we know that all clothing needs to be washed frequently, so it isn’t appropriate to use heavy tapestry fabrics.
    
   This answer says the reverse, and say we shouldn’t use clothing fabrics as a heavy tapestry. This is probable: clothing fabrics are presumably lighter than “heavy tapestry fabrics”. And I’m guessing heavy tapestry fabrics are heavy for a reason, and therefore lighter clothing fabrics wouldn’t do. Like I said, not 100% supported, but it has a fair bit of support from the information above.
    
   This answer is not the contrapositive of the conditional chain I drew above. The sufficient condition is “clothing”, and not “appropriate to be clothing”. Appropriate only appeared in the necessary condition, and you can’t switch it around to another term.
5. This contradicts the stimulus. It said that heavy tapestry applications “do not include any types of clothing”.