Resolve the Paradox Questions on the LSAT: Explaining the Surprise

A paradox question, sometimes called resolve the discrepancy, gives you two statements that appear to be in tension and asks which answer best explains how both can be true. The stem reads: which one of the following, if true, most helps to resolve the apparent discrepancy, or explains the surprising result.

Notice the word apparent. There is no real contradiction. Your job is to find the missing piece of information that makes the surprise unsurprising.

Before reading the answers, articulate the puzzle. Usually it has the shape: you would expect X, but instead Y happened. For example, the factory installed faster machines, yet output did not increase.

Once you can say expected versus actual clearly, you know exactly what a good answer must do: it must give a reason the expected outcome did not occur, while leaving both stated facts intact.

A correct paradox answer does not deny either fact. It adds a new fact that reconciles them. In the factory example, a strong answer might say that the new machines required weeks of operator retraining, during which output temporarily fell. Now both facts coexist.

Beware answers that resolve the puzzle by contradicting one of the givens. If an answer implies that output actually did increase, it has not explained the discrepancy; it has denied it. That is wrong.

Some answers make the paradox worse by giving another reason to expect the original outcome. Others are simply irrelevant, addressing a detail that does not touch the tension. Both are wrong.

Test each answer by asking: if this were true, would I now understand why the surprising thing happened. Only the answer that produces that click is correct.

Identify the two facts in tension and phrase them as expected versus actual. Predict that the answer must supply a reason the expectation failed without denying either fact. Eliminate answers that contradict a given, deepen the puzzle, or are irrelevant. Confirm the survivor lets both facts stand.