Logical ReasoningDifficulty: Hard

PT101 S3 Q23 Explanation

Historians of North American architecture

A free, expert breakdown of this official LSAT Logical Reasoning question.

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Full official LSAT questions are available through LawHub. This page provides LSAT Lab's explanation, strategy, and review tools without republishing the full official question.

Stimulus

Historians of North American architecture who have studied early nineteenth-century houses with wooden floors have observed that the boards used on the floors of bigger houses were generally much narrower than those used on the floors of smaller houses. These historians have argued that, since the people for whom the bigger houses floorboards were probably once a status symbol, designed to proclaim the owner’s wealth.

What this question is testing

Strengthen

Conclusion

The historians say narrow floorboards in big rich-people houses signaled wealth.

Evidence

Big houses (rich people) had narrow boards; small houses (less rich) had wide boards.

Evaluate

For "narrow boards = status symbol" to follow, we'd need narrow boards to be the luxury choice. If narrow boards were actually cheaper than wide boards, then the rich weren't flexing — they just had ordinary practical reasons to use them. The whole status-symbol story depends on narrow boards not being the cheap option.

Goal

Find an answer that establishes narrow boards weren't significantly cheaper than wide boards — so the rich weren't just being thrifty.

Reading along? Open the full official question in LawHub — we show a fragment here and keep the reasoning in our own words.

The question
23.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to strengthen the

Answer choices

  1. No Impact8% picked this

    More original floorboards have survived from big early nineteenth-century houses than from small

    This is about which floorboards survived to be studied today, not about why people originally chose narrow vs. wide. Survival rates don't bear on the status-symbol argument — the historians' observations about which size was used in which house are taken as fact.

  2. Correct49% picked this

    In the early nineteenth century, a piece of narrow floorboard was not significantly less expensive than a piece of wide

    Why this is right

    This rules out the price-based alternative. If narrow floorboards weren't significantly cheaper than wide ones, then the rich weren't just being thrifty — they were paying roughly the same (or more) per piece for narrow boards. That makes the choice harder to explain on cost grounds and supports the status-symbol explanation: rich people were choosing narrow boards for the message they sent, not the savings.

    Skill tested: Strengthen · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.

  3. No Impact5% picked this

    In the early nineteenth century, smaller houses generally had fewer rooms than

    That bigger houses had more rooms is unsurprising and unrelated to whether the floorboard width signaled status. Floor count or layout doesn't bear on the meaning of board width.

  4. No Impact5% picked this

    Some early nineteenth-century houses had wide floorboards near the walls of each room and narrower floorboards in the center, where

    This says some houses had wide boards near walls and narrow ones in the center under carpets. That's actually consistent with practical considerations (cheaper boards under carpet) rather than status — if anything, it complicates the status story by showing wide and narrow boards used in the same house. It doesn't strengthen the status-symbol claim.

  5. No Impact34% picked this

    Many of the biggest early nineteenth-century houses but very few small houses from that period had some floors that were made of

    This says big houses sometimes used more expensive floor materials, not narrow boards specifically. That doesn't bear on the status-symbol meaning of narrow floorboards in particular. If anything, it suggests rich people had multiple ways to signal wealth, but doesn't support that narrow boards specifically did so.

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