@OP, in the future, please try not to be so promiscuous with private messages; you should probably just select one or two of us to whom to send your message, so that we aren't all converging on the same thread and repeating each other's points.
"just before" is an idiomatic phrase that means "a very short time before". it doesn't necessarily mean zero gap; it's just a common-sense concept of "a short time" relative to the situation at hand.mundasingh123 wrote:So GmatGuru, From the phrase "just before the election " we must interpret the meaning that there was no gap/days between the poll and the election.
since the cycle of election campaigning is generally a few months up to a year, in this situation "just before" would be acceptable for a few days, or even a week or two -- i.e., a very short time relative to the overall length of the election cycle.
on the other hand, if a friend gets to a party and i said "my wife got here just before you did", then this is obviously not implying a time gap of days or weeks; here, we're probably talking about a couple of minutes maximum.
remember that "explain the situation" questions, like strengthening and weakening questions, are testing the big picture of the passage/argument; they are not questions in which you nitpick tiny details.
hmm?This CR appears more of a test of Lateral Thinking . Is this represenative of GMAT .
the GMAT is much more of a lateral thinking test than the LSAT, which has many more question types that deal with formal logic. e.g., check out question #106 in OG12, which is about as non-lateral as questions are going to get (it's a formal logic question about sequencing); that's the only question of that type that i've ever seen on an official GMAT source, but such questions are commonplace on the LSAT.
in addition, the LSAT has a whole section of "logic games" that is completely non-lateral, formal thinking; the gmat, which is much more of a test of lateral thinking, has no equivalent whatsoever for that section.
note that this difference is designed to reflect the difference in the professions for which these tests serve as admission tools: the practice of law is in large part dedicated to nitpicking and pedantry, while the practice of business is much less along those lines.
