Hardest LG, LR, and RC Forum

[Clyde Frog]

This was put out in 2010, so it doesn't take into account some of the most recent stuff, but it is still interesting to see which LG, LR, and RC caused the most problems for test takers. It's crazy that the titanium ink question was only answered with 15% accuracy among all test takers.

LG

http://blog.powerscore.com/lsat/bid/153 ... f-All-Time

LR

http://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/lr_15-hardest.cfm

RC

http://www.powerscore.com/lsat/help/rc_ ... ssages.cfm

[mornincounselor]

Post removed.

[WaltGrace83]

Some the LRs I felt weren't so bad (the coffee/insomnia one especially). Some of them are absolutely miserable. I don't know if its because I've done the Titanium Ink one before but I felt like the answer isn't too hard to come by either. A few of them you can knock out easily. The one with "location" was hardest to knock out but once you realize that "location" is not being talked about its fine!

It is interesting how the correct answer will jump out at you once you know its correct yet during your initial look at it your like, "wtf?"

[Clyde Frog]

IMO the fish, paper mills, and dioxin question is the hardest LR question ever to appear on the lsat.

[Jeffort]

IMO the fish, paper mills, and dioxin question is the hardest LR question ever to appear on the lsat.

Yeah, I agree. From my experience having analyzed all questions many times being a teacher/tutor, I think it's the most complex LR argument that's ever appeared. The overall reasoning pattern with the number of layers and logical steps involved in the structure leading to the conclusion that creates the deeply buried central assumption the CR directly attacks is far more complex than any of the other top end difficulty questions that have appeared over the years since 1991.

I'm impressed with the complexity and tactics the test writers put into constructing that question to make it such a brain teaser. The reasoning pattern is very difficult to understand properly due to several challenging aspects of the structure as well as difficulty involved in interpreting the basic content/meaning of the premises and conclusion due to phrasing/word choice and the ideas/subject matter involved with how the ideas relate in context.

The question is super difficult because the complex argument makes it hard to figure out the core assumption that's buried deeply beneath several layers of confusing logical steps you have to recognize/navigate successfully during analysis to pinpoint the exact unsupported shift/main assumption. The double negative stuff involved with weakening a negative conclusion and also having to keep the modalities of the other ideas involved in the premises straight to try to understand the support/conclusion relationship of the argument properly adds serious insult to injury by creating a confusing mess of correlations in your short term memory. Being able to see the big picture clearly without getting mixed up about the +/- modalities of the several factors involved in the +/- correlations presented is hard due to having to juggle multiple pieces of info of different modalities in your head without mixing any of them up or making double negative interpretation mistakes. It's just extra pure evil in that way.

Some the LRs I felt weren't so bad (the coffee/insomnia one especially). Some of them are absolutely miserable. I don't know if its because I've done the Titanium Ink one before but I felt like the answer isn't too hard to come by either. A few of them you can knock out easily. The one with "location" was hardest to knock out but once you realize that "location" is not being talked about its fine!

It is interesting how the correct answer will jump out at you once you know its correct yet during your initial look at it your like, "wtf?"

Your observation is an important one, especially for people seeking to master LR and score 170+. One of the most common characteristics of LR questions considered to be high difficulty level is that the CR is somehow 'stealthed' to steer test takers away from even wanting to give it serious consideration after first read.

Top difficulty questions are intentionally structured in ways so that without a thorough deep/high level analysis and clear big picture understanding of the stimulus and deeper underlying logic involved, your initial reaction to the CR on first read will be something like 'WTF? probably not it' and/or knee-jerk reaction heavy handed instant elimination so that you just boxed yourself into wasting more analysis time debating wrong answers with zero chance of it getting you the point while time remaining ticks away.

Biases instantly triggered by first impression/split second reaction during first read (even from just the first few words the AC says before having read the entire sentence) are dangerous and frequently cause people to instantly conclude it's not correct without even thinking it through for 3 seconds or having a concrete logical reason in mind before instantly eliminating it. Those biases also cause many people to decide not to give such answers much if any consideration or deeper analysis and instead spend time prioritizing analyzing a few trap answers that include words/phrases that are more directly and obviously related to something in the stimulus that gave a favorable first impression on first read to get takers to be attracted to those trap ACs and want to analyze/focus on them more than others.

The way to get past that is to focus on improving level, depth and quality of analysis you do with the stimulus before heading into the answer choices so that you get to the point where your processes and level of thinking/understanding of arguments leads to the 'stealthed' CRs for hard questions actually jumping out at you on first read rather than making you think WTF? the way you describe reacting to the CR for the titanium problem.

Recognizing and being attracted to the stealthed CRs for hard questions on first read is caused by having done better/deeper analysis of the stimulus before diving into the answers. Doing that helps so that you recognize how the CR relates to some deeper aspect of the logic in the stimulus, such as the core assumption of the argument, or some other significant logical relationship/idea created by the reasoning pattern but that isn't explicitly mentioned in the text. This makes it so that having the right ideas in mind needed to be attracted by/recognize the CR when you read it requires having done deeper analysis to have figured out those unstated ideas/relationships. The stealth ACs look unrelated/WTF? on first read to test takers that only superficially understand the stimulus/what was explicitly said/discussed but didn't analyze deep enough to figure out the precise assumption(s)/flaws/important underlying logical relationship in the reasoning clearly enough to recognize they are what the cryptic/WTF? sounding CR logically relates to that makes it correct.

[Lightworks]

Kinda surprised at the LG list. Zephyr Airlines threw me for a loop the first time I saw it, but the rest weren't anything special.

I have a hard time remembering specific RC's, just because the topics are so similar. I was a Biochem major, so I don't generally find the technical science passages difficult. The multicultural passages are the bane of my existence though. Fuck Chinese talk-story to hell.

Vaguely remember most of those LRs. I agree that Fish/Dioxin is probably the toughest LSAT question ever. If I sat down with it for 10 minutes, I could make sense of it. But, in real test time it ain't happening.