Why is the Answer A

@Steph, Happy to help. This argument concludes that it's unlikely that playing cards were common in mid-14th century Europe. The author's support is that writers who wrote about games did not mention cards, and the laws about games mention games like dice, chess and other games, but they fail to mention anything about cards. The stimulus can be diagrammed to help us see what's going on. Writers of 14th century - >doesn't mention cards 14th century statute - >doesn't mention cards + mentions other games C: playing cards likely wasn't common The question asks, "The pattern of reasoning in which one of the following is most similar to that in the argument above?" Let's look for the answer choice that most closely matches what we've mapped out the stimulus to be. (A) says, "Neither today's newspapers nor this evening's television news mentioned a huge fire that was rumored to have happened in the port last night. Therefore, there probably was no such fire." (A) can be mapped to today's newspapers - >don't mention fire this evening's television shows - ->don't mention fire C: likely wasn't a fire (A) matches up really well with the stimulus. We would expect a huge fire to appear in today's newspapers an evening television shows. Based on the fact that it wasn't mentioned, the author concludes that the huge fire probably didn't occur. The conclusion of (A) says "probably," which also matches the wording the stimulus uses, which is "likely." This is our answer choice. (B) says, "This evening's television news reported that the cruise ship was only damaged in the fire last night, whereas the newspaper reported that it was destroyed. The television news is based on more recent information, so probably the ship was not destroyed." The problem with (B) is that it describes conflicting accounts of an event between two sources. This did not occur in our stimulus, so we can get rid of (B). (C) says, "Among the buildings that are near the port is the newspaper's printing plant. Early editions of this morning's paper were very late. Therefore, the fire at the port probably affected areas beyond the port itself." (C) is incorrect because the argument in the stimulus concluded that it was likely that something did not occur/wasn't common. (C) actually concludes that something did happen, which is bad. It also concludes that the thing that happened affected other things, and this also fails to match the stimulus. We can get rid of (C). (D) says, "The newspaper does not explicitly say that the port reopened after the fire, but in its listing of newly arrived ships it mentions some arrival times after the fire. Therefore, the port was probably not closed for long." The problem with (D) is that it provides support for something that happened in its conclusion (newly arrived ships were in the newspaper's listing). However, our argument in the stimulus is based on the absence of evidence and concludes that something probably wasn't common, so this doesn't match up well. We can get rid of (D). (E) says, "The newspaper is generally more reliable than the television news, and the newspaper reported that the damage from last night's fire in the port was not severe. Therefore, the damage probably was not severe." The problem with (E) is that, just like (D), it provides support for something that probably occurred, but the argument in the stimulus is about a lack of evidence. Does this make sense? Let us know if you have any more questions!