Critical Reasoning

In recent years, a village outside Osaka, Japan has taken to hosting a ninja festival, a celebration of Japan's heritage that reflects on its feudal past while exalting its pop culture driven present. But clearly only children take this festival seriously, for they are the only attendees who bother to dress up as ninjas.

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

a) Any attendee who dresses up as a ninja takes the festival seriously.
b) No attendee who takes the festival seriously would fail to dress up as a ninja.
C) Anyone who is not dressed up as a ninja is not attending the festival
d) The festival organizers have instituted a ninja-themed dress code.
E) If an attendee is not dressed as a ninja, then that attendee will not be taken seriously by other attendees.


Points in argument
In recent years, a village outside Osaka has taken to hosting a ninja festival,
Osaka is in Japan.
ninja festival is a celebration of Japan's heritage that reflects on its feudal past while exalting its pop culture driven present.
Since only children are the only attendees who bother to dress up as ninjas.
Assn1: only people who dress up as ninjas can attend
Assn2: Only children bother to dress up as ninjas
Assn3: Those who attend take festival seriously
only children take this festival seriously................conclusion

Which of the following is an assumption on which the argument depends?

a) Any attendee who dresses up as a ninja takes the festival seriously...........
b) No attendee who takes the festival seriously would fail to dress up as a ninja.
C) Anyone who is not dressed up as a ninja is not attending the festival..........
d) The festival organizers have instituted a ninja-themed dress code..............even though there is no theme dress code it is possible that makers prefer ninja dress code for participants just for fun or tradition.
E) If an attendee is not dressed as a ninja, then that attendee will not be taken seriously by other attendees............seriousness among fellow attendees is out of scope and not our concern.

I 'm confused between option A,B, C and my analysis.
where did I go wrong in prethinking?

Mechmeera wrote:a) Any attendee who dresses up as a ninja takes the festival seriously...........
b) No attendee who takes the festival seriously would fail to dress up as a ninja.
C) Anyone who is not dressed up as a ninja is not attending the festival..........
d) The festival organizers have instituted a ninja-themed dress code..............even though there is no theme dress code it is possible that makers prefer ninja dress code for participants just for fun or tradition.
E) If an attendee is not dressed as a ninja, then that attendee will not be taken seriously by other attendees............seriousness among fellow attendees is out of scope and not our concern.

I 'm confused between option A,B, C and my analysis.
where did I go wrong in prethinking?

I am not really clear regarding why people bother to prethink in the first place. Prethinking takes time, and also prethinking can lead you to the WRONG answer.

What you might be better off doing is seeing that the argument has a logical gap. It jumps from the fact that only children dressed up as ninjas to the conclusion that children are the only ones who take the festival seriously.

(A) This is not necessary for filling the logical gap. The argument says that those who dressed up are the ONLY ones who take the festival seriously, not that all those who dressed up take the festival seriously.

(B) This is the correct answer. The argument says that only children dressed up and therefore only children take the festival seriously. To fill the gap you need to assume that ONLY those who dress up take the festival seriously. The logical implication of that assumption is that if a person takes the festival seriously, then the person would not fail to dress up.

(C) This actually tends to conflict with what is said in the argument, which seems to imply that people other than those dressed up did in fact attend the festival, and did not take it seriously.

I think that the main takeaway here is that in order to get CR questions right, you need to completely understand the prompt and to not be very concerned with strategies such as prethinking, which are not substitutes for clear understanding of logic of the prompt, the question and the answer choices, and which can actually guide you to the wrong answer if you are not careful.