LSAT 149 | Section 3 | Logical Reasoning: Q23

QUESTION TEXT: Each new car in the lot at Rollway Motors costs more…

QUESTION TYPE: Parallel Reasoning

CONCLUSION: Any car in Rollway’s lot that costs between $5,000 and $18,000 is a used car that is less than 10 years old.

REASONING: New cars cost more than $18,000. So any car that costs less than $18,000 is used.

Old cars (10+ years) cost less than $5,000. So any car that costs more than $5,000 is recent (less than 10 years old).

These principles are combined to form the conclusion: any car that costs more than $5,000 but less than $18,000 is used and recent.

ANALYSIS: This argument uses two conditional statements and their contrapositives.

Old ➞ less than $5,000

Not less than $5,000 ➞ not old (recent)

New ➞ more than $18,000

Less than 18,000 ➞ Not new (used)

Don’t make an incorrect negation mistake here! Something like “all recent cars cost more than $5,000” is an error. We only know that no old cars cost more than $5,000.

The correct answer will use a pattern like this:

A ➞ B
B ➞ A

C ➞ D

D ➞ C

B + D ➞ A + C

All of the answers write in terms of apartments. I’ve rephrased them in terms of cars from the original. Hopefully this helps clarify the structure.

___________

1. This does not follow the pattern. This is more like if the original argument was “Cars older than 5 years cost more than $5,000. Cars more recent than 5 years cost less than $5,000. Thus, cars that are 5 years old cost exactly $5,000”.
2. This argument is valid, but doesn’t match our pattern. This is like “Cars less than 5 years old cost $5,000 or $6,000. No car more than 5 years old costs more than $4,000. Thus, any car that costs $6,000 is less than 5 years old”. It works as an argument, but the question isn’t asking us which one is not flawed.
3. CORRECT. This answer matches our pattern of reasoning.
    
   All apartments on the 5th floor or above have 3 or more bedrooms. So any apartment with less than 3 bedrooms is below the 5th floor.
    
   All apartments on the 3rd floor or below have 1 bedroom. So any apartment with more than one bedroom is above the 3rd floor.
    
   Thus, any apartment with less than 3 bedrooms but more than 1 bedroom must be both below the 5th floor and above the 3rd floor.
    
   This answer is tricky because it rephrases the concepts from the stimulus – you may have been looking for a range of values to parallel the “between $5,000 and $18,000” idea from the stimulus. But we do have a range here, really! The equivalent is “between 1 and 3 bedrooms”, which the answer rephrases as 2 bedrooms.
4. This does not match our pattern. This is like “No car older than 5 years costs more than $5,000. But only $6,000 cars have heating. So if a car has heating, it is not older than 5 years”. It makes sense, but doesn’t match.
5. This doesn’t match our pattern. This is like “Any car less than 5 years old costs more than $5,000. The lot has no cars that are 5 years old or more. So, if there is a car on the lot, it costs more than $5,000”. Again, this argument makes sense but it doesn’t match.

Recap: The question begins with “Each new car in the lot at Rollway Motors costs more”. It is a Parallel Reasoning question. Learn how to master LSAT Parallel questions on the LSAT Logical Reasoning question types page.

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