Q21 - City official: Landowners must clear the snow

[christine.defenbaugh]

Question Type:
Inference (Must Be True)

Stimulus Breakdown:
Tons of rules!
1) Gotta clear your snow within 24 hours. If you don't, all kinds of bad things might happen to you.
2) At 24 hours, the city has the right to clear your sidewalk for you. (Doesn't mean that it always will). IF they do (which they might not), you'll get billed.
3) At 48 hours, if neither you nor the city have cleared it, you will (for sure) get a citation. If citation, then fine.

Answer Anticipation:
It's worth noting how much more locked in the 48 hour rule is than the 24 hour one. At 48 hours, some consequences are guaranteed. At 24 hours, it's just possible. With all these rules, we need to be extra careful that the outcome in the answer choice is guaranteed by the rules.

Correct answer:
A

Answer choice analysis:
(A) Vetting this against both sets of consequences, it passes. It's past 24 hours, so the city has a right to clear the snow, and it's guaranteed to bill when it does so. And it's also past the 48 hour mark, so the citation is a guarantee.

(B) This is tempting if you missed that the 24 hour rule was a mere possibility - the city may or may not clear your snow at that point.

(C) While the 48 hour rule is a guaranteed outcome, it only guarantees citaitons and fines - not actual snow removal.

(D) This one is pretty tempting if you thought it said that all landowners who still have snow on their sidewalks. But it didn't - it's talking instead about landowners who didn't clear the snow (themselves). If the city clears it for them before the 48 hour mark (billing them for the privilege), then they'll be spared the citation/fine.

(E) Two big problems here: first, the extenuating circumstances is a safe harbor for the fines, not the removal bill. Second, the conditional translation of "unless" is "if not". So, 'if no extenuating circumstances, then you get fined'. That doesn't mean, necessarily, that extenuating circumstances definitely spare you from the fine (or bill).

Takeaway/Pattern:
On an Inference question, strong language is often a warning flag. But that doesn't mean it's always wrong. The question is whether the strength of the answer is supported by the text. When the stimulus has some strong statements (and conditionals are by definition strong!), then those statements could justify a strong inference.

#officialexplanation

[DawsonM339]

Hi - My initial answer choice on this question was D. I know understand how that answer choice does not consider that the city may have cleared the sidewalk for some of those landowners before 48 hours, and thus they would not get fined. However, I do not understand how question A could be the correct answer since it does not consider the exception that a landowner may be able to show an extenuating circumstance. Any help with this is great appreciated. Thanks!