Premise: British journalist Iain Pears' best-selling murder mystery, set in 17 th century England, is compared to Umberto Eco's The Name of the Rose . Pears uses the thriller as an occasion to wax philosophical, meditating on scientific method and political liberalism.

Hypothesis: The comparison between Umberto Eco's and Iain Pears' books is unfair.
Answer: it is not possible to tell

Premise: With several miles of sandy beach, Long Beach is an excellent watersports center .

Hypothesis: Long Beach has several miles of beach and is great for water sports.
Answer: yes

Premise: They had too many patients and, with every patient new to them, didn't know important details.

Hypothesis: They had zero patients and so they shut down the business.
Answer: no

Premise: it tends to uh go to the extremes of being dry or being moist and it it's done a little bit of a foundation damage that uh most of these houses get no matter how much watering we do

Hypothesis: It's either very dry or very moist and is doing damage to our foundation, which we will fix next year.
Answer: it is not possible to tell