How do LSAT Paradox questions work?

LSAT Paradox questions: explaining both facts at once

Last updated August 13, 2026

A Paradox question presents two statements that are both true and that sit oddly together, then asks what would resolve the tension. Stems read "which one of the following, if true, most helps to explain the discrepancy" or "...to resolve the apparent conflict". You may also see it called Resolve the Discrepancy or Explain the Result; the job is identical.

The first thing to notice is that there is no argument here. Nobody concluded anything, so there is nothing to attack. This is the type most often mishandled by students who have gotten good at Weaken, because the reflex to find the flaw has nothing to bite on.

Both facts are true. That is not negotiable.

The stem says "if true" about the answer, and the passage's two facts are given as fact. So an answer that resolves the tension by suggesting one of them is mistaken, mismeasured, or overstated has not resolved anything — it has refused the question. This single rule eliminates more wrong answers on this type than anything else.

Take a case: a city widened a highway, and afterward the average commute along it got longer. Tempting reading — the widening did not work, or the measurement is off. But you are not asked whether the widening worked. You are asked what could make both facts unsurprising at once.

Something like this does it: the widening made the route attractive to drivers who had previously used other roads, so the number of cars using it rose faster than its capacity did. Now both facts sit comfortably. The road did get bigger, and the trip did get slower, and there is no longer anything strange about that.

The shape of a real resolution

Good answers almost always introduce something the passage left out — a group nobody counted, a change that happened at the same time, a difference between two things you had been treating as one. The tension exists because a piece was missing, and the answer supplies it.

A hidden change in who is being counted. The population measured before and after is not the same population.
A second cause pulling the other way, large enough to swamp the first.
An ambiguity in a term — 'commute' meaning trip time for one figure and total time on the road for the other.
A threshold or reporting change that alters what gets recorded without altering what happens.
A time lag, where the effect being measured has not had time to appear.

How the wrong answers fail

It denies one of the facts. Disqualified immediately — see above.
It explains only one side. Plenty of answers give a fine account of why the road was widened, and say nothing about why the trip got slower. Half an explanation resolves nothing.
It deepens the paradox. A surprising number of trap answers make the tension worse, and they read as relevant because they are firmly on topic.
It is merely related. On-topic, true-sounding, and inert. Ask what it changes about the tension; if the answer is nothing, it is out.
It assigns blame. Whether someone made a mistake is a different question from whether both facts can be true together.

The check that catches all five: state the two facts to yourself in one sentence each, then read the answer and ask whether both sentences are still true and no longer surprising. If either half fails, move on.

Try one

A real Paradox question, from the bank subscribers practice on

A Rendsholm courier company replaced half its vans with electric cargo bikes on inner-city routes. Because bikes carry less and travel more slowly between stops, managers expected their parcels per driver-hour to fall below the vans'. Instead, in the first year bike couriers averaged noticeably more parcels per driver-hour than van couriers on comparable inner-city routes. Both fleets used the same dispatch software, the same parcel mix, and drivers of similar experience.

Which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy described above?

AVan drivers on the company's inner-city routes must spend a large share of every shift circling the surrounding streets in search of a legal parking space before any delivery can be made.BElectric cargo bikes cost the courier company substantially less to purchase, insure, and maintain over a working year than delivery vans of comparable age and mileage do.CBike couriers reported markedly higher job satisfaction than van couriers did on the company's annual employee survey, which was administered to both fleets at the end of the first year of the change.DThe company's suburban routes, which were unaffected by the change and were never considered as candidates for cargo bikes, continued throughout the year to be served entirely by the same vans that had always covered them.EBecause a van holds far more parcels than an electric cargo bike does, each van courier on these inner-city routes begins the shift with a considerably larger load of parcels to deliver than each bike courier working the same kind of route begins with.

Pick one to see the explanation. No account, nothing to dismiss.

Sources

LSAC — Types of LSAT Questions

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