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Happy St. Paddy’s, lads and lassies!

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The June LSAT is far enough away that you can get away with celebrating St. Patrick’s Day and even taking a day off studying if you choose. Tomorrow’s hangover will be but a distant memory come test day. If green beer is your thing (it shouldn’t be), go for it, or spike that kale smoothie if your tastes align more with the health nut set.

But why not take a little time to celebrate St. Patrick’s Day by looking at some topically relevant LSAT questions? Since there are more than 80 released LSAT prep tests out there, you can find questions topically related to just about anything.

Legend has it that St. Patrick drove the snakes out of Ireland. There never were any snakes in Ireland, it turns out, but there are lizards native to the island. That’s your excuse to check out the snakes and lizards game (December 1998 game 2). It’s an oldie but a goodie. It’s also good preparation for some of the weird-ish games that have shown up on the LSAT lately.

If your mind is on Irish history today, you may find yourself a bit more interested than usual in reading about what fossilized pollen tells us about the history of Irish agriculture (June 2007 passage 4). The slight buzz you’re feeling may also help make this passage less mind-numbingly boring. It’s a sterling example of a kind of reading comp passage that comes up all the time on the LSAT: contrasting new findings to what was previously believed.

Next, let’s take a trip to Dooney County, featured in a pair of logical reasoning questions (June 1999 section 1 #12-13). Dooney County is a fictional place as far as I can tell, but there is a Dooney Rock in Ireland which achieved some degree of fame in a poem by Yeats, so I’ll assume we’re talking about Ireland. There’s one argument followed by a necessary assumption question and a parallel reasoning question (one stimulus followed by two questions was pretty common in the last millennium but hasn’t been seen on a released LSAT in a while). The argument has the kind of pointlessly dumb assumption that might make you want to bang your head against the wall. It’s also a pointlessly dumb argument in general — if you need to know whether the county is flat, why not go there or consult a topographical map or something? With a little St. Paddy’s day celebration in you, you might find the courage to direct your anger where it belongs: at LSAC.

If you know of any other topically related LSAT questions, comment away. Otherwise, celebrate away. Just don’t do anything that would get in the way of passing Character and Fitness.