The best explanation for Mozart’s

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

TopicsRole

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Stimulus

The best explanation for Mozart’s death involves the recently detected fracture in his skull. The crack, most likely the result of an accident, could have easily torn veins in his brain, allowing blood to leak into his brain. When such bleeding occurs in the brain and the blood dries, many of the bolstered by the fact that the fracture shows signs of partial healing.

What this question is testing

Role

Conclusion

The author thinks the cracked skull is what killed Mozart.

Evidence

The author lays out a plausible chain — crack tears veins, blood leaks, brain gets damaged, person eventually dies — and then mentions one extra detail at the end: the fracture shows partial healing. The question asks: what is that last detail doing in the argument?

Evaluate

Here's the trick. To blame Mozart's death on the fracture, the fracture has to have happened before he died. A skull crack after death cannot kill anyone. So the author needs to head off the obvious objection:

Partial healing solves that. Bones only heal in living tissue. If the fracture was healing, Mozart was alive when it happened.

Goal

The right answer will say the partial-healing claim shows the fracture did not occur after death.

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

The question

The claim that the fracture shows signs of partial healing figures in the argument in which one of

Answer choices

Wrong Role3% picked this
It shows that Mozart’s death could have
The argument never claims Mozart's death could have been avoided. It asks what caused the death and supports the fracture explanation. Partial healing supports the timing of the fracture, not anything about preventability.
3%
Correct72% picked this
It shows that the fracture did not occur after
Why this is right
This is the role precisely. Bone only heals in living tissue. So evidence that the fracture had partially healed shows Mozart was alive when the crack occurred — meaning it happened before death, not after. That timing is critical: only an antemortem fracture could be the cause of death. Partial healing is what makes the cause-of-death claim viable by ruling out the post-mortem alternative.
Skill tested: Role · how this choice captures the argument's function is the move to repeat next time.
72%
Wrong Role15% picked this
It shows that the dried blood impaired Mozart’s
The mechanism (dried blood damaging brain faculties) is supported earlier in the argument by the description of bleeding into the brain. Partial healing does not speak to whether dried blood actually impaired anything — it speaks to when the fracture happened. Wrong role.
15%
Wrong Role1% picked this
It shows that Mozart’s death occurred
The argument expressly says brain damage from bleeding "commonly, though not immediately" leads to death — the opposite of sudden. Partial healing also independently suggests time passed between the injury and death (since healing takes time). Nothing here is being used to argue death was sudden.
1%
Wrong Role9% picked this
It suggests that Mozart’s death was
The accident hypothesis is mentioned in passing as the likely cause of the crack, but the argument does not use partial healing to support that. Partial healing supports the timing of the fracture, not whether it was accidental versus intentional. Different role.
9%

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