PrepTest 106, Section 2, Question 11
John works five days each week except when(56 more words not shown)
Which one of the following(8 more words not shown)
- AJohn never takes(9 more words not shown)
- BEvery day last(10 more words not shown)
- CJohn does not(9 more words not shown)
- DLast week John(7 more words not shown)
- EThere were no(18 more words not shown)
Reading the argument
Five days a week doesn't necessarily mean Monday through Friday. John could work weekends. Calling the employer an insurance company makes a conventional office schedule easy to picture, but the passage never gives us that schedule.
Friday is fixed: John works as a blacksmith then. Last week also had neither of the stated exceptions, so he worked five days. What we don't know is which four days he worked at the insurance company. Why couldn't they have been Saturday, Sunday, Monday, and Tuesday?
What we’re looking for
The conclusion fills that gap by assigning the insurance work to Monday through Thursday. For a required assumption, I'd look for the missing restriction on the schedule: John didn't work on the weekend last week. Without that restriction, the author can't insist on those particular weekdays.
Working the answers
- A
The length of John's vacations doesn't matter to a week in which he wasn't on vacation at all. He could take a two-week vacation at another time while the argument about last week's schedule remained unchanged. This assumption is not required.
- B
We count days on which John worked, not total hours. A partial day could still be one of those days. The conclusion doesn't say he worked full shifts or a 40-hour week, so it doesn't depend on that stronger claim.
- C
Last week had neither vacation nor holidays. Whether John combines those two things in other weeks has no bearing on this week's distribution of workdays. There is no need to rule out taking a vacation during a holiday week elsewhere in the year.
- DCorrect
The conclusion assigns insurance work to four distinct days, Monday through Thursday, and the passage gives Friday as a blacksmith day. Those already account for all five working days. If John also worked on Saturday or Sunday, that proposed schedule would require more than the five days he worked last week.
So the argument depends on excluding weekend work. Notice the limited scope: D concerns last week. We don't need a sweeping rule that John has never worked any weekend.
- E
The conclusion doesn't require John's two jobs never to overlap on a day. Suppose he did insurance work Monday through Thursday, added some blacksmith work on Thursday evening, and worked as a blacksmith Friday. He would still have worked five days, and the conclusion about the four insurance days would still hold.
The passage says he works as a blacksmith on Fridays; it doesn't say he can do that work only on Fridays. A blanket ban on doing both jobs on one day is therefore unnecessary.
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