Question 66·200 Super-Hard SAT Reading Questions·Information and Ideas
Researchers examining an eighteenth-century merchant's ledger have debated whether its main columns recorded goods as they arrived by ship or goods already stored in the merchant's warehouse. Entries list quantities beside abbreviated commodity names, while ship names appear in many margins. Using spectral imaging, a team determined that most ship names were written with inks applied later than the corresponding quantity entries. The main-column monthly totals exactly match totals in surviving warehouse-inventory sheets but not totals reconstructed from customs records for individual shipments. Yet several marginal dates coincide with the port-entry dates of the ships named beside them. Taken together, these findings suggest that ______
Which choice most logically completes the text?
For a hard inference question, identify what each piece of evidence establishes and then choose the option that explains all of it without adding unsupported claims. Pay particular attention to chronology, differences between comparison records, and qualifications that distinguish the primary function of a document from information added later.
Hints
Compare the record sets
Consider whether the main-column totals correspond more closely to the warehouse documents or to the customs documents.
Use the ink sequence
Ask what the order in which the quantities and ship names were written reveals about the ledger's original entries and later annotations.
Explain every finding
Choose the completion that accounts for both the later addition of the ship names and the correspondence between marginal dates and port-entry dates.
Step-by-step Explanation
Identify the main entries' likely function
The totals in the ledger's main columns exactly match the warehouse-inventory sheets but do not match the customs records for individual shipments. This evidence supports the inference that the main entries primarily tracked stored goods rather than goods arriving shipment by shipment.
Interpret the timing of the marginal notes
Spectral imaging shows that most ship names were added after the corresponding quantities. Therefore, those names were not part of the ledger's original main entries.
Account for the port-entry dates
Several marginal dates match the port-entry dates of the ships named beside them. This pattern indicates that the later annotations were not unrelated notes; they likely connected some stored goods with particular ship arrivals.
Select the complete inference
The best-supported completion is “the main entries most likely tracked warehouse inventory, with shipping details added later to link some stored goods to particular arrivals.” It accounts for the matching totals, the sequence in which information was entered, and the correspondence between marginal dates and ship arrivals.