What Makes an LSAT Question “Hard”?

In the Blueprint LSAT classes I teach, we cover some of the hardest LSAT questions ever. These are questions that more than half the group often gets wrong. It can be demoralizing, but I tell my students to embrace the challenge—I know they can do the easier ones on their own!

What exactly makes a hard LSAT question “hard,” though? Today, we’re going to uncover exactly that.

Standard Legal Disclaimer

Law School Admissions Test questions are copyrighted materials. If you’re on the pre-law path, you probably know that means we can’t republish them here.

So here’s the plan: I’m going to walk you through various aspects of LSAT question difficulty, from beginning to end. We’re going to focus on the LSAT Logical Reasoning section since those questions are self-contained and don’t require reading an entire passage for context. For each “element” of question difficulty, I will reference a real LSAT question (providing preptest, section, and question numbers) that showcases the given trait.

In some situations, in order to illustrate a concept, I will write fake questions that use the same techniques as the cited materials. But if you’re studying for the LSAT, I would encourage you to look up the real questions! Much can be learned from really studying the test writer’s tendencies.

Further Reading

🧠 An Introduction to the LSAT Logical Reasoning Section

❓ Breaking Down LSAT Question Types

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Understanding LSAT Question Prompts

The first difficulty jump students can encounter in a question is from the question itself (the “prompt”). Most LSAT question prompts are more or less straightforward, but some of them disguise what they are asking.

Here are a few examples of unusual question prompts. Can you figure out the question type of each?

1. Davis’s response suggests that he interpreted Carrie’s criticism to mean…
PT 119, S4, Q15

This question definitely buries the lede. It’s one of those two-speaker stimuli where the second speaker responds to the first; here, we’re asked how Speaker #2 (Davis) interpreted something said by Speaker #1 (Carrie).

On the surface, this looks pretty innocuous. But let’s ask ourselves, what is this question really asking us to do? If we’re diving into how Davis interpreted Carrie’s words, what does that suggest about Davis?

Exactly. It suggests that Davis’s response is somehow flawed. Indeed, the question of “how does Davis interpret Carrie?” implies that he misinterprets Carrie. (If there were no misinterpretation, why would the question be asking?)

So yes, this is a flaw question, despite the fact that it doesn’t explicitly reference a flaw! Trippy.

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2. Which of the following most logically completes the argument?
PT 140, S1, Q4

You might think you know what type of LSAT question this is. You may have seen this kind of language dozens of times before. But here, the context of the stimulus can change the meaning of the question.

Most of the hardest LSAT questions of the above type look something like this:

Which of the following most logically completes the argument?

Chef Lee has nine cabbages and three summer squashes. Chef Lee always chooses the vegetable that is more plentiful in the kitchen. Hence, _______.

This is what we’d call a soft must-be-true question. It asks for what conclusion is most strongly supported by the facts given. (Here, that Chef Lee will choose cabbage over squash!)

However, consider this variant that uses the exact same question prompt:

Which of the following most logically completes the argument?

Chef Lee has nine cabbages and three summer squashes. Hence, he will choose to prepare cabbage for tonight’s dinner, since _______.

Although it looks the same on the surface, this is no longer a soft must-be-true question. We’re being asked to fill in a “since,” not a “hence.”In other words, we’re looking to supply a premise, not a conclusion. That makes this a strengthen question.

The takeaway here is to read the stimulus carefully and to not assume that the same question wording always connotes the same question type.

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3. Based on the passage, which of the following is the most accurate assessment of Alex’s claim?
PT 156, S2, Q5

This is an interesting question because, unlike the other 95% of Logical Reasoning questions, it resists categorization. In a Flaw question, we’re essentially asked, “Why is the argument flawed?” Whereas a Describe question (sometimes called a “Method of Argument” question) asks, “How is the argument successfully made?” The former deals with invalid arguments; the latter, valid ones.

But here, we’re being asked to assess the claim. Whether the argument is valid or not is undetermined. Indeed, if we look at the answer choices, we get a mixed bag:

A. The claim is acceptable because…
B. The claim is questionable because…
C. The claim cannot be evaluated because...
D. The claim has not been established because…
E. The claim is dubious because…

The answer choices run the full spectrum from valid (A), to “it’s impossible to know” (C), to completely invalid (E).

The lesson here is that some LSAT questions are true oddballs. This question mixes up patterns we’re familiar with (Flaw, Describe) in a way we don’t typically see on the LSAT. The key in these situations is to apply the skills we already have: What’s the conclusion? What’s the best supporting evidence? Does the evidence do its job? With these fundamentals in mind, we follow the instructions the question prompt gives us.

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Navigating Wordy Stimuli in LSAT Questions

The stimulus is that short paragraph of text we get in a Logical Reasoning question. Another source of challenge in some of the hardest LSAT questions is the difficult language of these stimuli, which can be long, dense, and full of jargon.

“It often doesn’t matter what an argument says, just what it does.“

Take this (fake) stimulus for example:

Epidemiologist: If the bacterial infection continues to grow exponentially, in a few days there will be ten billion bacteria per milliliter of blood in the patient’s bloodstream. Dr. Sanderson asserts that this will not be a problem, since she will have administered antibiotics by then to kill the bacteria in the blood. This, however, would be a temporary solution: if the bacterial population continues to double every 3 hours, and if at hour 72 half of the bacteria in the bloodstream were eliminated by antibiotics, then by hour 75 the bloodstream would be just as infected as it had been before the antibiotic treatment.
Adapted from PT 140, S1, Q6

If you’re like most students, this stimulus provides exactly the type of content you’re going to law school to stay away from: biological sciences, medicine, and enough math to look like one of those “story problems” from fifth grade. 

But here’s the thing, we don’t need to understand everything. The infection, the exponential growth, and the mathematical rate of spread are a sideshow, a distraction. The question prompt in this case gives us one job:

Which of the following most accurately states the conclusion of the epidemiologist’s argument?

This is a main point question. We want to stay on task and read with our blinders on. If a given sentence is the argument’s conclusion, great. If it’s not, we ignore what it’s saying.

Here, we get the conclusion midway through (The antibiotics are a “temporary solution”). After that, we can stop reading. Yes, really! The rest is just supporting evidence we don’t need for this particular question.

There are a couple of valuable takeaways from this one:

1.  Read the question prompt first. Doing this tells you what your specific job is in a given question. In a flaw question, you’re looking for some kind of error in reasoning. In a parallel question, you’re paying attention to argument structure. And yes, in a main point question, we just need to grasp the conclusion. We can ignore everything else.
2. If you made the mistake of reading the stimulus before the question in this one, you would likely waste precious time trying to grasp the numerical nuances of the bacterial spread, all of which is a tremendous waste of your precious time.
3. Not all information is important! I tell my students to “work smarter, not harder.” Focus on the information that helps answer the question, and avoid the rest. In a lengthy stimulus such as this, it is never the case that you will need all the information to answer a question. Key in on what’s important. Disregard the rest.

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Let’s look at one more (fake) question:

Which of the following is most strongly supported from the scholar’s statements?

Scholar: A person who pursues knowledge without continual acknowledgment of the subjectivity and contingency of truth harbors a fundamentally naïve worldview. Yet those who are ceaselessly conscious of the subjectivity and contingency of truth necessarily compromise their capacity for intellectual conviction.
Adapted from PT 130, S3, Q15

This one isn’t as long as our medical science question, but Holy Philosophy, Batman! This one is just dripping with $20 words and abstract ideas.

The stimulus is short, but wordy, so let’s lean on strategy.

This is a soft must-be-true question. Like most must-be-true type questions, our success here is contingent on combining ideas. In other words, if A and B are both true, what happens when we put A + B together?

Let’s take a classic example:

Socrates is a man.
All men are mortal.
Therefore, Socrates is mortal.

The shared term—”man”—helps us realize that these ideas can be combined. Socrates is a man, but all men are mortal. The shared term is often the connecting tissue that lets us link ideas together.

Now let’s revisit our tricky stimulus:

Scholar: A person who pursues knowledge without continual acknowledgment of the subjectivity and contingency of truth harbors a fundamentally naïve worldview. Yet those who are ceaselessly conscious of the subjectivity and contingency of truth necessarily compromise their capacity for intellectual conviction.

Do we see our overlapping term?

Both the first and second sentences share an idea: constant awareness of “the subjectivity and contingency of truth.” Notice that both sentences use slightly different language to describe this awareness (“continual acknowledgement,” “ceaselessly conscious”). That’s another LSAT difficulty trick.

Either way, “conscious awareness of the subjectivity and contingency of truth” is quite a mouthful compared to “man” above. So, we’ll just call this constant awareness for short.

But if you see the overlap in ideas, this one is not that different from the Socrates example:

If you don’t have constant awareness, you’re “naive.”
But if you do have constant awareness, you’re “compromised.”

This means that the right answer will link “naive” and “compromised” in some way (specifically, “if you’re not compromised, you’re naive”).

The takeaway here is that complex verbiage can often belie a simpler logical structure. It often doesn’t matter what an argument says, just what it does. Don’t give up just because the language is tough. Read beyond the language and look for the underlying structure. Here, if you see overlap in terms, you’ve won half the battle.

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Answer Choice Purgatory

So you’ve identified the question and made your way through a tough stimulus. Maybe you’ve even anticipated the right answer. Finally, you make it to the answer choices, only to be greeted with this:

(A) provisionally endorsing a strategy on the grounds that it avoids invoking contested terminology used by the opponent
(B) provisionally endorsing a strategy on the grounds that it leads to a counterargument that would enable the participants to resolve a dispute
(C) provisionally endorsing a strategy on the grounds that it leads to a counterargument whose acceptance requires adopting a position that contradicts one’s initial stance
(D) dismissing a strategy on the grounds that it relies on an appeal to emotion rather than addressing the validity of the position
(E) dismissing a strategy on the grounds that it prevents the participants from identifying which assumptions are actually in dispute
Adapted from PT 136, S2, Q25

For context, these are the answer choices from an imaginary Describe question. High-level Describe questions are a real culprit for LSAT difficulty and staples in the hardest LSAT questions!

What often makes answer choices difficult in Describe is the level of abstraction. All five of the above are very indirectly referencing the argument advanced in the stimulus, but only one of the five is actually making an accurate characterization of what that argument is doing.

The abstract language here is enough to make your eyes glaze over. Actually, LSAC is counting on it. So, how do we fight the urge to throw in the towel?

Finding Patterns in LSAT Questions

The first thing we want to deploy is a technique called parallelism. In questions with lengthy answer choices such as this, the LSAT often uses patterns. Rather than read all five answer choices from end to end, we want to first lightly skim the beginnings of each answer choice in parallel with each other, directly comparing them.

Here, for instance, we have “provisionally endorsing a strategy” versus “dismissing a strategy.” Hard though these answer choices may be, it’s probably pretty easy to figure out whether the argument is saying “do this!” or “don’t do this!” By figuring out this first fork in the road, we can eliminate two to three answer choices from the jump.

Let’s say we’ve dismissed the “dismissing” answer choices and are left with (A) through (C). Still, we can continue with our parallelism technique.(A) says the strategy helps us “avoid” something, while (B) and (C) say the strategy leads to an effective counterargument. If we decide it’s the latter, then it’s simply a matter of comparing the type of argument in (B) versus (C).

The actual right answer here is beside the point—but definitely look up the original! Rather, the takeaway, like before, is that there are usually ways to “work smarter, not harder.” Rather than becoming completely overcome by the difficult language, we can continue to problem solve and look for patterns. Then, we can conscientiously eliminate answer choices that misdescribe the tone or thesis of the argument.

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Final Thoughts

The LSAT is designed to test your ability to reason under pressure, and one of its primary weapons is difficulty by obfuscation. Whether through confusing question prompts, dense stimuli, or abstract answer choices, the test is constantly trying to obscure simple logical tasks behind layers of complexity.

The good news is that “complex” does not have to mean “impossible.” The techniques we’ve discussed—reading the question first, identifying overlapping terms, using parallelism in answer choices—are all ways to cut through that obfuscation and get to the heart of what’s being asked.

The hardest LSAT questions aren’t hard because they require advanced knowledge or a genius-level IQ. They’re hard because they demand focus, strategy, and the discipline to work smarter rather than harder. These are skills that anyone can develop, but are hard-earned through hours of practice and review. Master those skills, and even the toughest questions become manageable.

Blueprint LSAT can help you cut through the confusion with more than 7,000 LSAT questions at your fingertips. ​​Whether you want the flexibility of a Self-Paced Course, prefer to navigate the LSAT with instructors in a Live Course or 170+ Course, or even private LSAT tutoring, we have the study method that fits your learning style.