Logical Reasoning · Paradox

PrepTest 150 · Section 3 · Question 2

Phase 1 (your first ~400 questions): read the guidance, then answer. No clock.

Step 1 · Pre-Question Guidance · read this first

Question type

Paradox

The one idea it tests

A choice that looks harder or worse makes sense once you see what information it gives the chooser.

The basic logic

State the clash: an easy option is open, yet the chooser often picks the harder one. Look for a fact that gives the harder option a hidden benefit, especially a fact showing the chooser can learn something useful from it. Use the Handshake Test: the right answer must shake hands with both sides.

Tiny words that decide it

“yet”
“even though”
“explain”

Playground logic

Frankie and Sharon walk past an empty food truck to wait in a long line at a busy one. The patty looks silly until you add the missing piece: the long line is how they tell which truck is good. The crowd is the clue.

Step 2 · The kid story

Frankie and Sharon and the Two Food Trucks

At the town fair, two taco trucks sat side by side. One had a line of twenty people. The other had nobody. Frankie and Sharon marched straight to the back of the long line. Marcus threw up his hands. "Detectives do not wait! The empty truck is RIGHT THERE." Sharon shrugged. "We have never eaten at either one." Frankie added, "So how do we know which tacos are good?" Priya smiled over her juice box. "You look at where people already are." Lulu wrote on her clipboard: twenty people cannot all be wrong, probably. Marcus squinted at the empty truck. A fly landed on its menu. "Fine," he grumbled, and joined the line. Twenty minutes later, all four of them agreed: the wait was worth it.

Step 3 · Try the model question

At the fair, two taco trucks are side by side, one with a long line and one with no line at all. Surprisingly, most kids who have never eaten at either truck choose to wait in the long line, even though they could be served right away at the empty truck.

Which choice, if true, does the most to explain why the kids act this way?

Step 4 · The courtroom tale

The Case of the Packed Bakery

"Your Honor," said the lawyer for Empty Oven Bakery, "our rival must be cheating. Customers pass our open door and wait forty minutes outside their shop!" Mr. Whitfield rose, snapping his suspenders. "I call a customer." A woman took the stand. "Ma'am, had you tried either bakery before?" "Never." "So why wait?" "Because a crowd outside a bakery usually means good bread," she said. "An empty shop tells me nothing." Mr. Whitfield turned to the judge. "No cheating, Your Honor. The line is information. New customers read it like a review." The judge nodded. "Puzzle solved. Case dismissed."

Step 5 · Work the real question

Open PrepTest 150, Section 3, Question 2 in your official copy from LSAC (for example in LawHub) and read it there.

Your answer

How to apply it

First write the paradox in one line: the chooser skips the easy option and picks the harder one. Then predict an explanation that gives the harder option a hidden advantage, for example that it tells the chooser something useful. Test each choice with the Handshake Test: does it explain why the harder option wins even though the easy one is available? Drop choices that describe the setting without making the harder choice sensible, and drop choices that only deepen the mystery.