How to deal with LSAT words that annoy you

Words, Words, Words... Sigh. One of the hardest things about the LSAT is that you can completely understand what you’re looking at and then get tripped up on wording. It doesn’t do either of us much good for me to sit here and list a bunch of vocab words for you, but what I can do is show you one of my favorite methods for dealing with the trickiest words you’ll encounter: “except”, “unless”, “until” and “without”.

So here we go. Take any of the annoying words ("except," "unless," "until," and "without") as introducing the necessary condition. In other words, whatever immediately follows one of these words is your necessary condition. Then, whatever other clause is present in the conditional statement will, when negated, become your sufficient condition. The phrase "Not B unless A" would first become "Not B then A." However, we're not done yet - we still have to negate "Not B" to become "B." So we have B ---> A. No need to take the contrapositive or rearrange anything. Examples with words replacing variables: "It's not delicious (B) unless it has salt or sugar (A),” would first become: "Not Delicious ---> there's salt or sugar..." BUT We still have to negate "Not Delicious" to become "Delicious." This gives us "Delicious ---> salt or sugar." (Meaning that we've directly turned "No X unless Y" into "X ---> Y”) I wrote a full article on this with another method (although I like it slightly less than this one), you can check it out HERE. Or, if you want to do a deeper dive into Logic Games vocab and recognizing different types of games, I have that too. Until next time! -Steve Recommended Resources: 1. LSAT CoursesThe best of my LSAT material with exclusive access to attend my Live Online LSAT Master Classes + Q&As, and on-demand video lessons you can watch anytime. Plus, LSAT study plans to keep you on track. Save hundreds of dollars with an LSAT course package. 2. Logic Games Explanations The explanations that should have come with the LSAT. These tell you why the wrong answers are wrong, why the right answers are right, and the easiest way to get the correct answer. 3. Mastering LSAT Logic Games This guide to Logic Games is by a former writer of actual LSAT questions! Enough said.

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