Logical Reasoning II: Predict First and the Translator
Read the choices empty-handed and 4 professional liars get the first word.
Zach, the chapter 1 student who went 151 to 176, developed a habit that unnerved his study partners: he’d read a stimulus and a stem, mutter the answer, and only then look at the choices, mostly to find out which letter agreed with him. It looks like a magic trick. It’s a trainable skill with a name, and by the end of last chapter you’d already built most of its parts. He wasn’t psychic. He’d tallied skeletons until the costumes stopped mattering, and then he did this:
•••
Predict First: read the stimulus and the stem, and before your eyes touch a single answer choice, write your own answer. In gap mode, that means naming the gap. In build mode, the connection the facts force. Mastery gate: 10 consecutive official questions with a written prediction, untimed, before you’re allowed near a stopwatch. The gate grades the habit, not the hit rate: a written prediction that turns out wrong counts toward your 10, and it’s worth more than a lucky silent answer, because it’s a deposition filed in advance. Only a skipped prediction resets the streak.
•••
Why this is worth a named drill instead of a tip: an answer choice is not information. It’s an argument aimed at you. 4 of the 5 were engineered, by professionals, to feel right to a reader who showed up without an opinion. Reading choices empty-headed is grocery shopping hungry; everything looks plausible. Predicting first is shopping with a list. Wrong answers start looking like items you didn’t come for.
2 bonuses. Speed, eventually: matching 5 choices against 1 prediction is faster than auditioning 5 from scratch. (A preview of how Part 3 buys time without hurrying.) And review, immediately: when you miss anyway, your autopsy’s step 1 is already on paper, in your real handwriting, uncorrupted by hindsight. Honest limits: a few question types resist exact prediction (parallel reasoning, some build-mode questions with many possible inferences). There, predict the structure instead: “the answer must share this skeleton” or “the answer must connect these 2 facts.” A structural prediction still beats an empty head. The gate is the gate. 10 straight, written, untimed. It’ll feel slow for 2 days. It’s the fastest thing you’ll ever do for your score.
Watch me predict: 1 gap, 5 stems, 0 choices
Last chapter ended with a claim I now have to pay for: that stems are camera angles, and a single prediction pre-answers a whole family of question types. So watch the whole family get pre-answered. One stimulus, no choices anywhere on this page.
Employees at Brightwater’s downtown office who joined the voluntary 7 a.m. fitness class have taken 30 percent fewer sick days this year than employees who didn’t join. The class, the wellness director concluded, is keeping the staff healthy.
First, the file work you’d now do on autopilot. Conclusion verb: is keeping, causal. Evidence: a comparison between joiners and non-joiners. The bone: after = because, and on this costume the sharpest blade is selection, file 1’s hard-costume move: the kind of person who volunteers for a 7 a.m. workout was probably the healthy kind already. The gap, in 1 written line: the argument assumes the class caused the health difference, when the health difference may have caused the class membership.
Now hold that 1 line and watch it answer 5 different stems.
The argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it… Prediction: it overlooks that the people who joined may already have been healthier than those who didn’t. The gap, stated as an accusation.
Which one of the following is an assumption the argument requires? Prediction: the smallest plank that closes it. Something like: the employees who joined were not, on the whole, already healthier than those who didn’t. Note the size; necessary assumptions are minimums, so the plank should be as narrow as the gap allows.
Which one of the following, if assumed, allows the conclusion to be properly drawn? Prediction: a plank wide enough to seal the gap completely, even if it’s oversized. Something like: any health difference between the 2 groups this year is attributable to the class.
Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument? Prediction: kill the rival suspect. Something like: before the class began, the 2 groups took sick days at the same rate.
Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the argument? Prediction: feed the rival suspect. Something like: the class drew mainly from employees with no chronic health conditions.
One gap. 5 answers, written before any test writer got a word in. That’s the demonstration; here is the same fact as furniture:
| The stem asks for | Your job |
|---|---|
| Flaw | Name the gap as a crime |
| Necessary assumption | State the smallest plank the gap needs (negate to confirm) |
| Sufficient assumption | Hand over a plank big enough to close the gap completely |
| Strengthen | Make the gap smaller (often: rule out another suspect) |
| Weaken | Make the gap wider (often: introduce one) |
5 stems. 1 prediction. Predict the gap once and you’ve pre-answered 5 question types. That table is the entire question-type chapter of a 500-page book, printed at the size it deserves. The reason it can be this small is that those books catalog stems, and stems are camera angles. You hunt skeletons.
Full dress: 1 gap, asked 2 ways, real choices
Time to do it with live ammunition. Cover the choices with your hand, read the stimulus and stem, and write your prediction. Really.
Marisol’s bakery sells more sourdough than any other bakery in the county. So when the county fair needs a single bakery to supply the sourdough for its bread-judging exhibition, the choice is obvious: no county bakery’s sourdough would serve better than Marisol’s.
The argument is most vulnerable to criticism on the grounds that it
(A) takes for granted that the bakery selling the most sourdough also sells the most bread overall
(B) presumes, without justification, that a product’s high sales establish its superior quality
(C) overlooks the possibility that Marisol’s sourdough sales have declined in recent months
(D) draws a conclusion about all county bakeries from evidence about only one of them
(E) confuses a claim about what the fair should do with a claim about what it will do
Prediction written? The skeleton is the word swap, file 3: evidence about sells more, conclusion about none better. Popularity walked in; quality walked out. The key, every choice, 1 clause each. (A): the argument never needs total bread sales; sourdough is the only product on trial. (B): the swap, named. Correct. (C): a recent decline wouldn’t even dent the evidence, which says she sells the most now. (D): built for the reader whose fresh some = all tally is itching, as file 2 warned. It sounds like a sampling crime, but the evidence isn’t about 1 bakery; “more than any other bakery in the county” already covers the whole field. (E): nobody confused should with will; the conclusion is openly a recommendation. Notice what (D) and (E) have in common, because it’s the master pattern for this question type: most wrong flaw answers accurately describe a crime that didn’t happen in this argument. Your written prediction is what keeps you from convicting the wrong skeleton.
Now the same stimulus, different stem. Predict again before peeking; your prediction shouldn’t change.
Which one of the following is an assumption the argument requires?
(A) Marisol’s bakery sells more bread of every kind than any other county bakery.
(B) The county fair has not already selected a bakery for the exhibition.
(C) Sourdough sales within the county reflect, at least to some degree, the quality of the sourdough sold.
(D) No bakery outside the county sells better sourdough than Marisol’s.
(E) Bread judges at county fairs prefer sourdough to all other breads.
The key: (A) is a plank 10 times wider than the bridge needs (every kind of bread?); necessary assumptions are minimums, and oversized choices are the classic trap here. (B) is about logistics, not logic. (C) is the smallest plank that lets sales speak to quality at all. Correct. (D) is out of bounds; the conclusion only ranked county bakeries. (E) is about the judges’ tastes, which the argument never leans on.
And the tool that confirms (C), which you should run on every necessary assumption answer you’re unsure of: negate the choice and watch what happens to the argument. Negated (C) says sales reflect quality not at all. The bridge doesn’t wobble; it vanishes. The conclusion is left standing on air. When negating a choice kills the argument outright, that choice was load-bearing, which is what “required” means.
Step back and look at what you just watched: choice (B) in the flaw question and choice (C) in the assumption question are the same gap in 2 grammatical moods. One states the missing plank as an accusation; the other states it as a need. Same stimulus, same prediction, 2 “question types.” Rows 1 and 2 of the translator table, cashing the same written line. The other 3 rows cash it the same way.
2 more, full dress: strengthen and weaken
The bakery pair worked a flaw and a necessary assumption, the top 2 rows of the translator. The bottom 2 deserve live ammunition too, because strengthen and weaken are where the gate pays off fastest: you’ve predicted the gap, so you already know whether to shrink it or widen it. Cover the choices.
A software firm gave its engineering team standing desks, and over the next 6 months, reported back pain among those engineers fell by half. The firm concluded that standing desks reduce back pain.
Which one of the following, if true, most strengthens the argument?
(A) Engineers on other floors, who kept their seated desks, reported no change in back pain over the same 6 months.
(B) The standing desks cost considerably more than the seated desks they replaced.
(C) A few engineers chose to keep their new desks in the lowered, seated position.
(D) Back pain is among the most common workplace health complaints nationwide.
(E) The engineering floor had been repainted shortly before the desks arrived.
Predict first: the skeleton is after = because, so strengthening means killing a rival suspect. The cleanest kill is a control group, some other floor where nothing changed.
The key: (A) is that control, ruling out a company-wide cause like a new wellness push. Correct. (B) is cost, which the logic doesn’t care about. (C) weakens, by diluting the treatment. (D) is a generic fact with no verdict. (E) hands you a fresh rival suspect, so it weakens if anything.
Strengthen on a causal claim almost always means “rule out the other explanation,” and a control group is the strongest form of that.
The city plans to cut downtown traffic by converting 2 main streets to bus-only lanes. Because a bus lane moves more people than a car lane, officials predict total downtown traffic will drop. Which one of the following, if true, most weakens the prediction?
(A) The 2 streets selected currently carry the heaviest car traffic downtown.
(B) Most cars on those streets are passing through downtown rather than stopping, and their drivers will shift to parallel streets rather than switch to buses.
(C) Bus-only lanes have successfully cut traffic in 2 comparable cities.
(D) The conversion will cost far less than building a new downtown garage.
(E) Buses in the new lanes are scheduled to arrive every 10 minutes.
Predict first: the prediction leans on a buried assumption, that drivers will switch to buses instead of just going around. Widen that gap. (B) does it precisely: the cars don’t vanish, they relocate, so total downtown traffic doesn’t fall. Correct. (A) doesn’t clearly cut either way. (C) and (E) both strengthen the bus plan. (D) is cost again, the logic’s blind spot. Weaken on a plan or prediction means finding the way the plan fails to do what it promises, and a displaced problem is not a solved one. 4 worked questions across this chapter, 4 different rows of the translator, 1 move underneath all of them: predict the gap, then shrink it or widen it on command.
The supporting cast, with 2 worked
The rest of the stems you’ll meet in LawHub. Most need 1 line. 2 deserve a demonstration.
Main conclusion: find the sentence everything else leans on; your rebuild step already does this. Role of a statement: name the job 1 line does for the conclusion. Point at issue: find the claim both speakers actually voted on, in opposite directions. Principle: find the general rule wide enough to cover this case. Method of reasoning: describe the skeleton in the abstract, which your journal has been training since chapter 6.
Parallel reasoning, worked, because it scares people and shouldn’t. The job: match the skeleton, ignore the costume entirely. Source argument: If the recipe is followed, the bread rises. This loaf rose, so the recipe was followed. You have a file for that: the door, walked backwards. Candidate 1: If the alarm is set, it rings at 6. It rang at 6, so it was set. Candidate 2: If the alarm is set, it rings at 6. It wasn’t set, so it didn’t ring. Both are about alarms; neither is about bread; topic is nothing. Candidate 1 walks backwards (then-to-if), a perfect match. Candidate 2 negates, a different crime, wrong answer. Parallel questions are file work, and your structural prediction (“the answer walks a door backwards”) does the rest.
Resolve the paradox, worked, because it’s build mode’s cousin. Bookstore: our sales fell 20 percent this year, yet our profits rose. Both facts are true; your job is to hire the explanation that lets them live together. Predict the shape before the choices: something that lowered costs or shifted the mix, like closing the money-losing cafe or selling fewer discounted bestsellers and more full-price books. The trap shape: choices that make the paradox worse or explain only 1 of the 2 facts. The right answer always has a hand on both.
3 more types, worked
The list above gives each stem a 1-line job. 3 of them trip people enough to earn a demonstration, so cover the choices and predict on each.
Point at issue, worked. 2 speakers, and your job is the 1 claim they voted on in opposite directions, which is rarely the loudest thing either said. Tomas: The city should build the new library downtown, where the most people can reach it on foot. Nina: Downtown land costs 3 times what land costs near the highway, and a library that drains the budget can’t stock its shelves. Predict before the choices: what did they disagree about? Not whether libraries matter (both want one), not whether downtown is walkable (Nina never denied it). They split on whether downtown is the right site given the cost. The trap shapes on these are reliable: a choice both speakers would agree with, and a choice neither one addressed. The right answer is always the claim one asserts and the other denies, so the test for any candidate is to ask: would Tomas check yes and Nina check no? If they’d both check the same box, or if 1 of them never weighed in, it’s a wrong answer wearing the topic.
Principle, worked. A principle question hands you a specific judgment and asks for the general rule it rides on, or hands you a rule and asks which case obeys it. Treat it as conditional logic in a robe. A reviewer refuses to praise any film she would not pay to see again. She has praised Okonkwo’s documentary. Predict the principle the conclusion needs: if she praised it, then she’d pay to see it again, which is the contrapositive of her stated rule. The bait on principle questions is a rule that’s too broad (covers cases the argument never touched) or too narrow (doesn’t reach this case), so size the rule to the judgment exactly, the same discipline you ran on necessary assumptions 2 pages ago. A principle is just a door built to swing over a category instead of a single fact.
Method of reasoning, worked. This one your journal has been training since the kitchen table, because it asks you to describe the skeleton in the abstract, ignoring the topic entirely. Critics say the new stadium will never fill its seats. But the same critics said that about the downtown arena, and that arena now sells out. So the critics are wrong about the stadium too. Predict the method in structural terms: the argument dismisses a prediction by pointing to a past case where the same predictors were wrong. Now read the choices as descriptions of that move, not of stadiums. The right one says something like rejects a claim by appealing to the unreliability of its source on a similar past question. The traps describe a different move accurately (the master pattern from the bakery, back again): “draws an analogy between 2 physical structures,” “presents statistical evidence about attendance,” both real-sounding, both not what happened. Method questions are flaw questions with the judgment removed; you name the skeleton and skip the verdict.
3 types, 3 predictions, 0 topics that mattered. That’s the tell across all of them: the stem changes the camera angle, the skeleton stays put, and your journal already speaks the language.
Build mode, full dress
The other job, and the rules flip: no attacking, just assembly. Cover, read, predict the connection.
Every vendor at the Saturday farmers market is required to carry liability insurance. Any vendor who sells prepared food must also pass a county health inspection. Dmitri sells fresh-cut flowers at the Saturday farmers market.
If the statements above are true, which one of the following must also be true?
(A) Dmitri has passed a county health inspection.
(B) Dmitri is not required to pass a county health inspection.
(C) Dmitri is required to carry liability insurance.
(D) Most vendors at the Saturday farmers market do not sell prepared food.
(E) Carrying liability insurance costs vendors less than passing a county health inspection.
The prediction: Dmitri is a vendor, the first rule covers every vendor, so something about Dmitri and insurance is coming.
The key: (A) walks the inspection door without confirming its trigger; we don’t know he sells prepared food. (B) is the trap worth the price of this chapter: flowers aren’t prepared food, but nothing says flowers are all he sells. Add a jar of jam to his table and the inspection rule grabs him. In build mode, the facts tell you what’s true, never what else might also be true. (C) is the prediction, cashed: vendor plus universal rule. Correct. (D) invents numbers the stimulus never offered. (E) invents prices. Build mode discipline in 1 sentence: every right answer is assembled entirely from bricks on the page, and the most seductive wrong answers are 1 plausible brick short.
And if (B) got your vote, you owe yourself the 20 minutes. Watch the compressed version. Deposition: “flowers aren’t prepared food, so Dmitri’s exempt.” Where the point died: the choices. Why did exempt feel safe? Because the stimulus never mentioned him selling anything else. Why does the stimulus staying silent feel like proof? Because I filled the gap with the most ordinary picture: a flower vendor sells flowers. And there’s bedrock: I treat what the facts don’t say as evidence of what’s false. In build mode that belief is poison. The facts are all you have, and silence is just silence. The rule, future tense: the absence of a fact proves nothing about that fact. Journal handle: silence = evidence, and if you worked file 6 last chapter, add the tally; this was its full-dress costume. Forecast: any build-mode question where the tempting answer needs the world to be normal.
The door, the machinery
File 4 taught you to spot illegal walks. Build mode is where you also have to make legal ones, so here is the complete kit, in sentences first, shorthand optional.
The translations. Every rule reduces to if A, then B, and 4 phrasings cover nearly everything. If A, then B: as written. A only if B: the “only if” part is the requirement, so this means if A, then B too; “admitted only if complete” means admission guarantees completeness, never the reverse. Unless A, B: means if not A, then B; “cancelled unless permits arrive” means no permits, cancellation. No A is B: means if A, then not B. Translate first, walk second. Most door errors are translation errors wearing a logic costume.
The 1 legal reverse. A door can’t be walked backwards, but it can be walked backwards-and-negated, both at once: if A then B guarantees if not B, then not A. If rain always wets the deck, a dry deck proves no rain. That’s the contrapositive, the move that made micro-drill item 3 in file 6 proven, and it’s the only reverse gear the door has. Backwards alone, illegal. Negated alone, illegal. Both together, airtight.
Chains. Rules link: if A then B plus if B then C gives you if A then C, and the whole chain has 1 long contrapositive (not C, then not A). The illegal walks scale up too, which is what file 4’s gym-code drill caught you doing: entering at 8:30 proves nothing about membership, because the chain only ever ran member-to-code-to-entry.
And that’s the kit. If arrow shorthand helps you (A → B, slash for not), use it in your scratch work. If notation made your eyes cross in some other book, skip it forever; every move above works in plain sentences, and the test grades conclusions, not penmanship. Mine looked like a seismograph. 175.
Door drills
Translate, then say what follows, 1 line each, pen.
- Rule: the kiln runs only if the vent is open. Fact: the vent is closed.
- Rule: unless the bridge is repaired by May, the parade is rerouted. Fact: the parade was not rerouted.
- Rules: every intern attends orientation; everyone who attends orientation gets a badge. Fact: Nina has no badge.
- Rule: no one on the night shift parks in lot C. Fact: Marco parks in lot C.
- Rule: if the sample is contaminated, the test is void. Fact: the test is void. Candidate conclusion: the sample was contaminated.
- Rules: if it snows, practice moves indoors; if practice moves indoors, the pool closes. Fact: the pool is open.
Key. 1: only-if marks the requirement; kiln running requires open vent, vent closed, so the kiln is not running (contrapositive). 2: unless translates to if not repaired, then rerouted; not rerouted runs the contrapositive: the bridge was repaired by May. 3: chain intern-to-orientation-to-badge; no badge walks the whole contrapositive: Nina isn’t an intern. 4: no A is B means night shift, then not lot C; Marco’s in lot C, so Marco isn’t on the night shift. 5: nothing follows; that’s the backwards walk, and void tests have other causes. The right answer to “what follows” is sometimes “not that,” and the test loves asking. 6: open pool, contrapositive up the chain: practice didn’t move indoors, so it didn’t snow.
Drills: call the gap
Now the files and the prediction run together. 5 naked arguments, no choices. For each, write the gap in 1 line, in your own words. Key follows, no peeking.
- I texted 3 friends about the 8 a.m. section and all 3 hate it. Clearly the whole campus wants it moved.
- Bikes made up a bigger share of rush-hour traffic this year than last. So there must be more bikes on the road.
- Lena parked free in the members’ lot on Tuesday. She must have joined the gym.
- Aiden is the most talked-about chef in the city this year, so his tasting menu must be the finest food in town.
- The month after the library extended its evening hours, teen arrests downtown dropped. The extended hours are clearly keeping kids out of trouble.
Key. 1: some = all; 3 friends are not a campus, and they’re not even a random 3 (you picked them). 2: percent vs. count; the share can climb because cars disappeared. 3: the one-way door, walked backwards; members park free, but so might anyone on an open-house day or behind a broken gate. 4: the word swap; talked-about and finest are cousins, not twins. Same skeleton as the bakery, new costume. Tally it. 5: after = because, costume number 13 if you’ve kept count since the kitchen table; other suspects include the school year starting and a dozen things that change in any given month.
Score yourself loosely, then mark the calendar: redo these 5 cold in 1 week. The standard isn’t “done.” The standard is “easy.” When all 5 feel insultingly obvious, the skeletons have moved from the files into you.
Round 2: harder costumes
Come back to these after your first week with the gate. Same drill, but now the bones hide better, and 2 of the 5 carry more than 1 skeleton, because real questions do that too.
- Every great violinist I’ve interviewed practiced at least 4 hours a day as a child. So practicing 4 hours a day in childhood is what it takes to become a great violinist.
- If the bridge is closed, Mara takes the ferry to work. Mara took the ferry this morning. The bridge must be closed.
- The share of employees using the company gym doubled after it moved to the lobby. Clearly employees are exercising more than they used to.
- Critics have called Reyes’s new film the most important documentary of the year. So if you see only 1 documentary this year, make it hers.
- In the 2 years since the city launched its bike-share program, downtown traffic deaths have fallen each year. The program is clearly saving lives.
Key. 1: some = all in a lab coat, with a second bone underneath: the sample is only the greats (you never interviewed the kids who practiced 4 hours and quit), and “what it takes” smuggles a requirement out of a pattern. 2: the one-way door, walked backwards again; maybe Mara just likes the ferry. The costume changed from a parking lot to a commute, and that’s the whole disguise. 3: 2 bones again: percent vs. count (the share can double because headcount shrank) and the word swap (using the gym is not exercising more; she might’ve quit her running club). 4: the word swap; important and worth-your-ticket are cousins, not twins. 5: after = because; the alternative suspects are everything else 2 years can change, starting with what traffic deaths did citywide.
Same standard, same rematch: 1 week, cold, until easy.
Round 3: mixed company
The last round drops the section labels, the way the test will. 2 of these are build mode; for those, write proven or not proven with the reason.
- Facts: every volunteer completed the safety course; the safety course is offered only in spring. Candidate: Theo, a volunteer, completed the safety course in spring.
- Since the stadium switched to mobile-only tickets, the share of attendees under 30 has risen sharply. Mobile ticketing is attracting young fans.
- Facts: the lab tests every batch; batch 41 failed its test. Candidate: batch 41 was not shipped.
- Teams that huddle most frequently win the most games, so frequent huddling improves a team’s play.
- Every reviewer on the festival’s 5-member jury praised the film’s ambition. Critics, then, agree it’s a great film.
Key. 1: proven; volunteer forces the course, and the course’s only-if forces spring. A 2-link chain walked forward, legally. 2: 2 bones; percent vs. count (the share of under-30s rises if older fans stop coming) wearing an after = because coat. 3: not proven; nothing connects failing to shipping. Silence = evidence, and the normal-world picture (“of course they wouldn’t ship a failed batch”) is not a brick. 4: after = because with the arrow backwards in plain sight; winning teams have more to huddle about, and good teams may simply huddle more. 5: 2 bones; 5 jurors are not “critics” (some = all) and ambition is not greatness (the word swap).
One thing you may have noticed
No stopwatch appeared in this chapter, or the last one. That’s deliberate, and it’s not Part 3 being lazy. Accuracy comes first because speed isn’t a separate skill; speed is what understanding looks like from the outside. You’ll get faster the way I did and the way Zach did: by knowing the bones so well the costumes stop costing you seconds. Part 3 just teaches you how to spend the time you’ll have freed.
•••
This week’s assignment, 3 parts.
Run Predict First on 10 untimed official LR questions from LawHub, written predictions, no exceptions; that’s the mastery gate, and most people need 2 or 3 sittings to clear it honestly. Work the 6 door drills in writing, translations included, even if the answers feel obvious; the kit has to be reflex before Part 3 puts a clock on it. And take your ugliest miss from the gate questions and give it the full 20-minute autopsy. With your prediction already on paper, watch how much sharper step 1 of the template suddenly is.
•••
Free companion #8: the Gate Tracker. Ten prediction boxes, a streak line, and the translator printed under them. The tracker shows Predict First in action and explains why a streak dying at 7 is useful data. Free at unpluggedprep.com/books.
•••
KEEP THESE 3
An answer choice is an argument aimed at you, so never read the choices empty-handed. Predict First, with the gate: 10 straight official questions with written predictions, untimed, before any clock. Wrong predictions count. Skipped ones don’t.
The translator: predict the gap once and you’ve pre-answered flaw, necessary assumption, sufficient assumption, strengthen, and weaken, because they’re the same gap in different grammatical moods. Stems are camera angles. You hunt skeletons.
Build mode runs on bricks and doors: every right answer is assembled entirely from facts on the page, the door’s only legal reverse is the contrapositive, and silence is never a brick.
•••
Next, the stubborn third. Reading Comprehension is where students feel least in control, and the fix starts with a sentence you’re now equipped to believe: a passage is just an argument that rented more space. Bring the same pen. Your LR work already did half the job.
