Game 3 and 4 rule wording and explanations

[AspenHerman]

Hi! Long time lurker, first time poster. I'm real confused this time. Here is the actual question:

For game 3, there are rules: "Wendy appears in every photograph that Selma appears in", and the explanation for this rule has it S -> W because "If Selma is in the photo then Wendy is in the photo."

However, for game 4, with the rule "Any language learned but the geologist is learned by the historian" has G->H...

This wording seems very similar to game 3, how is this wording not the same? How should I be differentiating these two? I had flipped the rules in game 3 because I made the mistake of thinking "If Wendy is in the photograph, then Selma is in the photo."

Thank you in advanced for your helpful explanation!!

[Dave Killoran]

Hi Aspen,

This is a good question, and a worthwhile concept to understand as you study this test. In this case, although they have similarities, they are not identical. And the difference between the two completely change the meaning. This isn't unusual on the LSAT, and it's one reason you have to read so closely.

Let's start by looking at the two rules in question:

• Wendy appears in every photograph that Selma appears in.
  
  Any language learned by the geologist is learned by the historian.

First, the top rule is known to be tricky, and so I made a point of further explaining that challenge in the text and noting that many people mis-diagram this initially. So, you got caught by what was an intentional trick of the test makers—they were trying to be deceptive here.

Second, these are conditional rules, so where are the conditional indicators? Stop for a moment and consider that, and then I'll italicize them:

• Wendy appears in every photograph that Selma appears in.
  
  Any language learned by the geologist is learned by the historian.

Right away you can see that the positioning of these is different, and this changes everything. In fact, if I were to rewrite that first rule to be similar in form to the second, it would look like this:

• Every photograph that Selma appears in, Wendy appears in .
  
  Any language learned by the geologist is learned by the historian.

Diagram that top one now, and I suspect you get S W a lot more easily. What happened was that you missed that aspect, and didn't realize the sufficient indicator "every" was modifying Selma, not Wendy.

The lessons here are to 1. read closely, and 2. track the placement of the indicators. That helps unlock this much more easily and quickly.

Thanks!