October 2002 LSAT Section 2 Question 11

If Gladys demonstrates plowing immediately before Frank demonstrates threshing, which one of the following must be true?

Karen-Norris on December 9, 2021

Question 29 - Answer E

I don't see why E is not correct. If Frank cannot go 6th, and Gladys cannot do milling, and T has to be before M. Then the only spot left for milling is space #6, and Frank cannot do milling because he's already doing harvesting and threshing, and Milling is one of the tasks, Gladys cannot do. That leaves Leslie doing milling in six place.

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Jay-Etter on January 14, 2022

Hi Karen, here is how I worked through the question. After writing our diagram and rules, we can deduce that Leslie has to be first, because F cannot go first and F must appear once before any Gs appear. This means our second spot either has to be L or F, because putting a G here would break the first rule.

The question is telling us Pg immediately before Tf, which we can combine with the fifth rule to make the block Pg.Tf.M(?). But because Pg is the first in this block, it has to follow an f somewhere to follow rule one. We also know H has to be performed by Frank, because it cannot be performed by either G or L (rules three and four). Therefore, Hf must come before the Pg.Tf.M(?) block. The obvious position to put this Hf would be in position 2, however that would be what option A is saying. So, let's try to disprove option A and place Hf in position three. Then we would get

_(L) _ H(f) P(g) T(f) M(L). M would have to be an L, because it cannot be a G (rule 3). However, this would force position 2 to be a G because it is the only option left, and G cannot come before the first F. Therefore, we can't put Hf in position 3 and Hf must go in position 2.

Option E is incorrect because we could come up with the following diagram:
S(L) H(f) P(g) T(f) M(L) W(g).

Hope this helps!