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I was under the impression that in a game, a phrase like "B has both W and E attributes" does not rule out the possibility that B also has another attribute. You can't assume "W and E only" unless the question explicitly says so, no?

However in the second LG of PT 35, the question becomes absurdly complex and you get incorrect answers unless you assume that "V has P and S" means that V cannot also have L. The correct answers in this case seem to require a normally incorrect assumption.

Am I off base here? Am I missing something? Did the takers of the October 2001 test get screwed by lazy LG design and is this something I will need to worry about?

kedinik wrote:
However in the second LG of PT 35, the question becomes absurdly complex and you get incorrect answers unless you assume that "V has P and S" means that V cannot also have L. The correct answers in this case seem to require a normally incorrect assumption.

Am I off base here? Am I missing something? Did the takers of the October 2001 test get screwed by lazy LG design and is this something I will need to worry about?

Yeah, it's a good rule of thumb that when your options are "I've misunderstood something" or "this LSAT question is flawed" that you should always assume the former not the latter.

You're right in that the phrase "V has P and S" should not be taken to mean that V does not have any other attributes (L in this case). However, the last rule indicates that T has fewer options than Z, which dictates that Z has at least two options. The fifth rule dictates that Z, which has two options, has exactly one option in common with V. Therefore V cannot have all three options, since that would give it two options in common with V. That's the reason you must assume V to have P and S only, not any ambiguity in the phrase.

Oh, got it. Thank you very much, makes perfect sense.