#17 - Advertiser: There’s nothing wrong with a tool that has

[German.Steel]

Just to be clear: I'm not saying that this is a flawed question that LSAC should remove. (D) is better. It's just rare that you get two answers that are both clearly right, and the "correct" answer comes down to distinguishing which one is slightly more perfect. I mean yeah, at the end of the day, the LSAT is an exercise in picking the *best* answer...but it just doesn't sit well with me having two clearly accurate answers, one of which is extraordinarily slightly better than the other. Feels like "both answers are correct, but one answer is more correct than another" not unlike Animal Farm's classic line about "all animals are equal, but some animals are more equal than others" (or whatever it was, lol).

[Luke Haqq]

Hi German.Steel!

You comment,

(D) is better. It's just rare that you get two answers that are both clearly right, and the "correct" answer comes down to distinguishing which one is slightly more perfect. I mean yeah, at the end of the day, the LSAT is an exercise in picking the *best* answer

Yes, at the end of the day, the right answer on the LSAT is whichever answer choice is best out of the five.

But it's still worth addressing why (A) is incorrect on its own. Answer choice (A) states that the flaw is that the VersaTool might "include some functions that are infrequently or never needed." Even if it had "some functions" that are infrequently used (say, 2 functions), it's still possible that the VersaTool has many other functions that one will use, that it has more functions than other multi-function tools, and that one will need other tools less often if one purchases it, as the advertiser concludes.

However, the stimulus leaves ambiguity in terms of how the number of functions of the VersaTool relates to how often one will need other tools. For example, the VersaTool could have more functions than any other tool but all of them might be useless (in which case one will need other tools). Or one might have particular needs in terms of functions that aren't among the functions of the VersaTool (in which case one will again need other tools).

So the VersaTool might include "some" functions that are infrequently needed (again, say 2 of 11 functions), but it still might be as useful as the advertiser claims even if that were the case.

[sxzhao]

I disagree with the explanation that I think choice D actually misrepresented the stimulus.
Note that in the first half the stimulus, VersaTool is described to be the tool with the "eleventh" function, which to me strongly implies that VersaTool covers all functions existing tools already cover while adding MORE".

This makes choice A strongly plausible, simply imagine a world where VersaTool has added 100 more functions compared to other tools that are never used. In this world, you'd use VersaTool AS OFTEN as any other multi-funciton tool.

In contrast, if we simply say Versa Tool is a tool with "eleven" functins, then this becomes a situation that choice D captures.