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SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 15)

Drill 15 · Reading & Writing · Hard Inferences

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About This Drill

SAT Reading & Writing: Hard Inferences (Drill 15) is a Reading & Writing practice drill covering Hard Inferences. It contains 5 original questions created by Brian Stewart, a Barron's test prep author with over 20 years of tutoring experience.

These hard SAT inference questions ask you to complete short academic passages by choosing the conclusion the text best supports. The right answer stays inside the evidence; the wrong ones tend to overreach, reverse the logic, or wander off the passage's point.

Questions & Explanations

Text
On one traditional account of the fable, the form requires that its brief story convey a moral lesson about how to act, whether stated outright or made plain by the outcome; a short animal tale that carries no such lesson, however charming, is not a fable on this account. Consider a lively little tale of a heron and a mole that ends with no lesson drawn and points to no way of acting, leaving readers with only the incident itself. If the account is right, then a reader applying it to this tale should conclude that the tale ______

Question 1. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) succeeds as a fable on that account, since the vividness of its animal characters is what the form most requires.
  • B) lies beyond the reach of that account, because a tale about animals cannot be judged by rules meant for human conduct.
  • C) falls short of what that account treats as a fable's defining feature, since it conveys no moral lesson about how to act. ✓
  • D) overturns the account, given that a tale this charming must qualify as a fable whatever conditions the account lists.

Explanation: (C) The account makes a fable depend on conveying a moral lesson about how to act, and this tale draws none and points to no way of acting, so by that standard it is not a fable. The choice applies the rule as given. (A) treats vivid characters as the core requirement, but the account locates it in the conveyed lesson, so it reverses the criterion. (B) exempts the tale because it concerns animals, yet the account is meant to judge exactly such tales. (D) says the tale's charm overturns the account, but charm is not among its conditions and cannot override them.

Text
A lake's summer murkiness was long blamed on algae alone, on the view that clearer water simply meant fewer algal cells. Repeated sampling over one season found that the water turned sharply murkier for days after heavy rains, when a swollen inlet stream poured in fine suspended sediment, even on dates when algal counts were low. Algae still clouded the water during warm calm spells, but they were not the only source of murk. Taken together, the measurements suggest that the lake's clarity ______

Question 2. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) has nothing to do with algae, which the sampling shows never affect how clear or murky the water is.
  • B) is set entirely by the season, so neither algae nor inflowing sediment can shift it from week to week.
  • C) depends mainly on the lake's depth, the real factor governing both its algal blooms and its rain-driven murk.
  • D) turns on more than algae alone, since inflowing storm sediment clouded the water even when algal counts were low. ✓

Explanation: (D) Clarity dropped sharply for days after heavy rains carried in suspended sediment, even when algal counts were low, so murk has a second source and does not turn on algae alone, though algae still clouded the water in calm warm spells. The choice revises the old view without discarding the algal effect. (A) says algae never affect clarity, but they still clouded the water in calm spells. (B) makes clarity fixed by the season, yet it shifted within days of rain. (C) blames lake depth, a factor the passage never measures or mentions.

Text
A researcher counted the marriages in a village during a certain decade using the parish's own marriage register, which recorded only weddings performed in the village church. The register left out village couples who married in the bride's home parish elsewhere, a common custom of the time, and those who wed in the nearby town during the years when the village had no resident minister of its own. Some couples also married while away at seasonal work. Because the register entered only ceremonies held in the one church, a marriage count drawn from it ______

Question 3. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) gives the exact number of the decade's marriages involving village residents, since all such couples wed in this church.
  • B) likely undercounts marriages involving village residents, since couples who wed in other parishes never entered this register. ✓
  • C) cannot inform any estimate, because a single parish register can never bear on how many marriages actually occurred.
  • D) probably overcounts the decade's marriages, since many couples in the register may in fact have come from outside the village.

Explanation: (B) The register entered only weddings in the village church, yet many village couples married in the bride's parish or in the town, so those unions never appear and a count from the register comes in low. The choice names the coverage gap the passage describes. (A) treats the register as a complete count, but couples who wed elsewhere were left out. (C) calls the register useless for any estimate, an overreach; the flaw is a specific gap. (D) claims outsiders padded the register, a scenario the passage never raises.

Text
An online retailer offered free return shipping to a randomly chosen group of customers for two months and saw that group's rate of product returns climb noticeably. Analysts asked whether the free returns encouraged the extra returns or whether returns were rising among its customers generally. A comparison group, not offered the free returns and tracked over the same two months, returned goods at its usual rate, with no similar climb. Because only the group with free return shipping showed the rise, the free-returns offer ______

Question 4. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) is a more plausible cause of the climb in returns than a general upward trend, since only the offered group rose. ✓
  • B) clearly had no effect on returns, since return rates were plainly rising across the retailer's customers that season.
  • C) probably mattered less than a decline in the quality of the goods shipped during those two months.
  • D) raised returns only because the compared group happened to receive an unusually reliable batch of products.

Explanation: (A) The rise in returns appeared only in the group given free return shipping, while a comparison group tracked over the same weeks returned goods at its usual rate, so a general upward trend cannot explain it, and the offer is the more plausible cause. The choice ties the rise to the offer without claiming certainty. (B) asserts an across-the-board rise, but the comparison group was flat. (C) credits a drop in product quality the passage never mentions. (D) invents a specially reliable batch for the comparison group, which appears nowhere in the text.

Text
At an excavation, a bed containing stone tools is sealed beneath a layer of volcanic ash. The ash settled directly on top of the tool-bearing bed, undisturbed, forming an even blanket with no sign of mixing between the two. The tools were found where they were made and used, not washed in from elsewhere, so the bed formed in place. The ash layer is well dated from the minerals it contains. Since a layer of falling ash can only settle on ground that is already there, the ash layer ______

Question 5. Which choice most logically completes the text?

  • A) was laid down at almost exactly the moment the toolmakers first began working at the site.
  • B) must be older than the tool bed, having been buried by the toolmakers' activity long after it fell.
  • C) can be pinned to the exact year the tools were made, since dating the ash would then date the tools precisely.
  • D) can be no older than the tool bed beneath it, and so settled after that bed was already in place. ✓

Explanation: (D) The ash settled undisturbed on top of the tool-bearing bed, and falling ash can only land on ground already present, so the ash is later than the bed beneath it; its date therefore gives a bound, not an exact age for the tools. The choice states exactly that bound. (A) ties the ash to when toolmaking began, but ash falling on the bed only requires the bed to exist first. (B) makes the ash older and buried by the toolmakers, reversing the layering the passage describes. (C) claims an exact year for the tools, but the dated ash shows only that the tools are older than it, not precisely when they were made.