Monroe, despite his generally poor appetite, thoroughly enjoyed the three meals he ate at the Tip-Top Restaurant, but, unfortunately, after each meal he became ill. The first time he ate an extra-large sausage pizza with a side order of hot pepper; the second time he took full advantage of the all-you-can-eat fried shrimp and hot peppers special; and the third time he had two of Tip-Top’s giant meatball sandwiches with hot peppers. Since the only food all three meals had in common was the hot peppers. Monroe concludes that it is solely due to Tip-Top’s hot peppers that he became ill.
If both Monroe’s conclusion and the evidence on which he bases it are correct, they would provide the strongest support for which one of the following?
(A) Monroe can eat any of Tip-Top’s daily all-you-can-eat specials without becoming ill as long as the special does not include the hot peppers.
(B) If, at his third meal at Tip-Top, Monroe had chosen to eat the baked chicken with hot peppers, he would have become ill after that meal.
(C) If the next time Monroe eats one of Tip-Top’s extra-large sausage pizzas he does not have a side order of hot peppers, he will not become ill after his meal.
(D) Before eating Tip-Top’s fried shrimp with hot peppers special, Monroe had eaten fried shrimp without suffering any ill effects.
(E) The only place Monroe has eaten hot peppers has been at Tip-Top.
Source : PrepTest 14 - February 1995 LSAT
From PowerScoreWell, we know he ate three separate meals with hot peppers, and, importantly, "
after each meal he became ill" (italics added for emphasis). Then, at the end, Monroe concludes that the peppers were the sole culprit.
The interesting thing is that we are told in the question stem that "both Monroe's conclusion and the evidence on which he bases it are correct," which means that we now have to accept that Monroe was right about the hot peppers being the sole cause of him
becoming ill after the three meals in question.
(A): Yes, this is far too broad, and it also looks into possible future meals, which haven't been addressed. We don't know anything about the daily specials, and it is possible that some other element—one that Monroe has yet to encounter—might make him sick, or that at future meals different factors might be in play.
(B): "I eliminated B because it didn't account for the size of the food that Monroe was eating." — as you've probably figured out now, the fact that this didn't address the amount of food eaten isn't a problem (since we are ignoring that element per the question stem). Instead, because this answer specifies that Monroe would've eaten hot peppers with this meal (which was a substitute for one of the three meals we already know about, where the hot peppers were indeed what was making him sick), we can ascertain that he would have for sure become sick after this meal. Thus, this answer choice is strongly supported by the information in the stimulus, and is correct.
(C): This answer choice has some similarities to (A). First, this is a forward-looking answer that talks about the next time, and at that point things could be entirely different. What we know about is what happened at the three meals discussed in the stimulus, and what happens thereafter is not bound by the same rules or conclusions. By comparison, look at answer choice (B), which quite specifically substitutes the food used in one of the three named meals in the stimulus.
So, while we knwo that when Monroe ate hot peppers at those meals and that caused him to become sick, for a future meal we can't guarantee what will happen, or that some other factor won't cause him to be sick.
Answer : B