Q23 - Maria won this year's local

[LSAT-Chang]

Since I am practicing my conditional logic diagramming, I decided to post my solutions to this problem

Maria won four-time winner
______________________
Maria trained hard

So the author is assuming something along the lines of:

If you won a four-time winner then you trained hard OR the contrapositive which is If you didn't train hard then you couldn't have won a four-time winner

(A) - Nothing about Sue -- we are only concerned with Maria
(B) - It is the reversed logic! This gives us: Maria trained hard --> Maria win four-time winner (not what we want!)
(C) - the correct answer! It gives us: Maria won four-time winner --> Maria trained hard (remember only if is a necessary condition)
(D) - Same problem with (A), we really don't care about Sue
(E) - Again.. we REALLY DON'T CARE ABOUT SUE!

Although this was probably one of those questions where you really didn't need to diagram, I just did for the sake of practice since I noticed that a lot of sufficient assumption questions included conditional logic. Any feedback would be great!

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Hey So! This looks great... That's exactly right, now keep an eye out for so many other Sufficient Assumption questions where the correct answer simply connects a premise with conclusion - meaning there is no conditional relationship in either the evidence or the conclusion, but instead in the assumption that connects them.

[LSAT-Chang]

Thanks for the great feedback Matt!
I think I know exactly what type of answer choice you are talking about.. something that I used to eliminate as an incorrect answer because I would think that it was just reiterating the premise + conclusion, when in fact it was an unstated assumption. It is one of those "obvious" answers but since it looks SO obvious, I would just cross em out.

[WaltGrace1983]

I've got a question about this one. I got it right fairly easily but I want to firm up my understanding.

I know that (A) (D) and (E) are out of scope for reasons mentioned above. Now when I am doing my review I notice that (B) and (C) are basically perfect reversals of each other.

(B) is Trained Hard --> Win the Race

(C) is Win the race --> Trained Hard

However, I pre phrased (C) and so I gave little consideration to (B) when I was going through the questions. I just picked (C) and moved on. Now I notice what the problem with (B) is and I want to make sure I got it right. Is the problem with (B) that we don't actually know anything about Maria other than she won the race? The argument is assuming that winning the race means training hard but, because training hard is the conclusion, we don't actually KNOW if she trained hard or not. We are just assuming it? So if we say that...

Maria beat Sue
-->
Maria trained hard

and plugged in the answer choice...

Maria beat Sue
&
If Maria trained hard she would win the sailboat race
-->
Maria trained hard

we see that this ALMOST works but the problem is that we don't KNOW if Maria trained hard whereas in (C) we get this...

Maria beat Sue
&
If she beat Sue she must have trained hard
-->
Maria trained hard

That argument is air-tight! We know she "beat sue" and we know that if she "beat sue" THEN she "must have trained hard" therefore we absolutely know that Maria "trained hard."

So basically, are all the correct answer choices to sufficient assumption questions just ones that act as a new "premise," a new premise that when paired with the original premise will undoubtedly lead to the conclusion? So to check my answer can I just plug it in as a second premise and see if it all logically stacks up to the conclusion?

This is probably a painfully obvious question but it is an understanding that can make my thinking much simpler I think

[ManhattanPrepLSAT1]

Nice work WaltGrace1983 ... you've got it! Remember we accept the evidence and question the conclusion. So we accept that Maria beat Sue, and question whether that implies that she trained hard.

Adding the conditional relationship in answer choice (C) bridges the gap in the reasoning, just as you pointed out above.