October 2002 LSAT Section 1 Question 15

Mystery stories often feature a brilliant detective and the detective's dull companion. Clues are presented in the st...

CWhite on December 30, 2020

C vs E - I got it wrong and I think I know why, can you confirm?

I answered E and looking back, I see E talks about the companion “uncovering clues” while the passage does not. Is this what makes E wrong? Also for C, can this be inferred from the conclusion that states “including the companion give readers a chance to solve the mystery”? I’d love some more insight, especially if my reasoning is wrong.

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shunhe on January 4, 2021

Hi @CWhite,

Thanks for the question! So remember, this is a must be true question. (C) follows directly from the second sentence and the last sentence. We’re told that the detective gets clues to deduce the correct solution, and then that the author’s strategy lets readers solve the mystery. So that suggests that some mystery stories give readers enough clues to infer the correct solution.

(E) is wrong because it’s not that the clues themselves are misleading, it’s that the dull companion incorrectly interprets the clues. So it’s not about finding misleading clues, since the detective uses the same clues to get to the correct solution. It’s about interpreting those clues in a misleading manner.

Hope this helps! Feel free to ask any other questions that you might have.