This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 4 a shot before reading this!

4.3: “Critics charge…”

The first clue in this question is the word charge, which in this context means “to accuse” or “to warn of the possible consequences of an action.” The word has a negative connotation; it tells us that the critics are not happy with the regulatory agency’s actions (or, as the case may be, its inaction).

This piece of information will help us with both blanks, but it is especially useful for blank (ii).  Here, we want a word that captures the sense of disapproval on the part of the critics. To compliment (D) someone is generally a positive thing; it means “to praise or congratulate.” To overlook (F) something means not to notice it, and these critics definitely noticed the agency’s shortcomings. It makes more sense to say that the experts panned (E) the agency — that is, they criticized it harshly.

Now let’s turn back to blank (i). At the end of the passage we learned that the agency was criticized because it basically let a power plant set its own inspection schedule. This means that the regulators let the plant managers decide how the regulations would be enforced. In other words, they were susceptible to (A) the influence of the people at the plant. Nothing in the passage suggests that the regulators are unaware of (B) or irritated at (C) their colleagues in private industry.

Vocab Notes

Although you don’t need to know the word untenable to get this question, it may help you to understand the passage a little better. The word means “unjustifiable; unable to be maintained.” So an untenable risk is a risk that is too great to be permitted.

Arguments, too, can be called untenable if they do not hold up to careful examination. In high-school algebra class, you may have encountered a “proof” that 1 = 2. If so, I hope your teacher then explained why that “proof” was based on an untenable line of reasoning.

Finally, a note on etymology. The word untenable (along with its opposite, tenable) comes from the French word tenir, meaning “to hold.” If you speak Spanish, you may also recognize the similarity to tener (also “to hold”)– or, more colorfully, tenedor (“fork”). All of these words ultimately come from Latin tenere (“to hold”), the same word that gives us tenet and tenacious.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 4 a shot before reading this!

4.2: “James Boswell’s Life …”

The central question here is: what “claim” is being made about Boswell that might be applied to Johnson instead? Well, the passage tells us that Boswell is regarded as the “first great modern biographer.” So our blank will capture the idea of “being the first to do something.” Which of these five words gets at this notion of “firstness?”

• Partisanship (A) means “bias,” especially bias in favor of a specific party or faction. You don’t have to be very original to be a partisan.
• Omniscience (B) means “all-knowingness,” which is way out of scope. Neither Boswell nor Johnson is credited with being supernaturally intelligent — at least, not in this passage.
• Precedence (C) literally means “coming before” (think “precede”). Most often, we use this word to describe something that is more important or urgent than another thing: “homework takes precedence over Facebook.” But it can also mean “coming first in time,” which is how the word is used here. This answer is our winner.
• Opportunism (D) isn’t quite as nice as it may sound. It means “taking advantage of opportunities as they show up” — regardless of how it affects other people. Iago in Shakespeare’s Othello is often described as an opportunist.
• Perseverance (E) means “steady effort in the face of difficulties or setbacks” — in other words, hard work. But working hard at something isn’t enough to guarantee that you’ll be the first one to achieve it. (Just ask Leibniz.)

Like most of the one-column TC questions, this is pretty straightforward … as long as you know the words! If any of the answer choices were unfamiliar, remember to make some flash cards so you can lock those new words into your working vocabulary.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 4 a shot before reading this!

4.1: “This filmmaker …”

Our clue here is the phrase “not … political,” which tells us that a political message is not an important feature of this filmmaker’s work. The blank, likewise, tells us what the filmmaker is not famous for. So the word that goes in the blank — our correct answer — will mean something like “politically motivated” or “politically engaged.” Of the five words in the list, only one is closely related to politics: polemical (A), which means “controversial and argumentative.” A polemic is an argument made primarily by criticizing the opposing viewpoint, which is a common tactic in political conflicts.

The rest of these answers don’t really have to do with politics. A film can have interesting cinematic (B) qualities regardless of whether it has a political message as well. 2001: A Space Odyssey is a great example of a film known for its striking camera work and visual storytelling, not for its political commentary. Dr. Strangelove, on the other hand, is an intensely political film that is also fascinating from a cinematic point of view. Likewise, a work can have a compelling narrative (C), be a commercial (D) success, or tell a dramatic (E) story whether or not it also has a political message.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.25: Dolphins and Boat Paint

It’s time for another round of “Same, Worse, or Better.” The way to approach this problem type (as I explained in my solution to 3.14) is to separate the answer choices into three piles: those that weaken the argument, those that strengthen the argument, and those that have no clear effect. Here, we’re only concerned with those answers that would strengthen the argument; thus, our first goal is to identify and reject the “Weaken” and “No Effect” answers so that we can focus on the most promising answer choices.

A good preliminary step is to identify the argument and try rephrasing it in your own words. In this case, you might come up with something like:

“Compounds in boat paint are contributing to increased dolphin mortality rates. Therefore, banning the paints will cause the mortality rate to drop quickly.”

Note that this argument is a prediction about what will happen if we take a certain course of action, not an ethical judgment about what we ought to do.

Now for the answers. Our first choice, (A), actually weakens the argument, if it has any effect at all. If concentrations of these harmful compounds are dropping, but mortality rates are rising, how can we be sure that the compounds are causing the die-off, or even contributing to it? And if we’re not sure that the compounds are causing the die-off, why should we believe that banning the paints will help?

Answers (B) and (D) are carefully-crafted distractors that blur the difference between a logical argument and an appeal to our emotions. If, as (B) suggests, other sea creatures are harmed by the paints too, then that gives us an added incentive for banning them (assuming we care about sea creatures). But this new information doesn’t affect the validity of the original argument, which only concerned the compounds’ effects on dolphins. The fact that manatees or seahorses are poisoned by the paints doesn’t tell us whether we are correct in blaming them for the dolphin die-off as well, just as the fact that chocolate is poisonous to dogs doesn’t imply that it’s harmful to humans. (D), likewise, attempts to cloud the issue: we can’t use other “marine animals” as the basis for predictions about dolphins. In a way, it’s the reverse of (B): the fact that anemones and clownfish can tolerate the compounds doesn’t mean that the same is true of dolphins. (After all, many types of berries are safe for birds but toxic to humans.) Both of these answers belong in the “No Effect” pile.

Answer (C), in contrast, strengthens the argument by answering a possible objection that someone might raise: “What about all the boat paint compounds that have already been released? Won’t those keep harming the dolphins?” (C) anticipates this line of reasoning and suggests that the compounds already in the ocean (and therefore exposed to water) will pose a threat only for “a few months.” If this is true, and we stop introducing these compounds via boat paint, then the problem should quickly resolve itself. Just as raising questions about an argument weakens it (answer A), anticipating and answering questions is one way to strengthen an argument.

Finally, answer (E) fails to address the original argument that banning the boat paints will lower the mortality rate. If the compounds are getting into the water in the first place, it’s fair to assume that the “manufacturer’s directions” are being disregarded, and banning the paints remains a reasonable course of action. In other words, (E) goes into the “No Effect” pile as well, leaving us with (C) as the only answer that strengthens the argument.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.24: Renaissance Prints, pt. 2

This is yet another recurring problem type. I call it “Vocab in Context,” for reasons that will soon become apparent. You’ll see these about once or twice per section, usually as one of multiple questions attached to a medium-sized reading passage.

With “Vocab in Context,” the trick is to focus first on the vocab, then on the context. This particular problem could be paraphrased as follows:

Which of the following five words means the same thing as “passive,” in the context of the passage?

There are two parts to this question, which suggests a two-step approach. In Step 1, we consider each of the answer choices and ask: is this a valid meaning for the target word? In this case, our target word is passive, which our learned friend Dr. Google defines as “accepting or allowing what happens.” With that definition in mind, here’s how the process plays out:

• (A) Disinterested means “detached, uninvolved, or impartial.” This is a close match for the meaning of passive, so we keep this word.
• (B) Submissive means “ready to yield to the will of others,” which is close in meaning to passive. Put this one in the keep pile too.
• (C) Flaccid literally means “limp,” but figuratively it means “dull” and “uninspiring.” This is not a close match, so we discard this answer.
• (D) Supine literally means “lying face up.” Figuratively, as you might expect, it means “weak” or “yielding” — a good match for passive and therefore a word to keep.
• (E) Finally, unreceptive means, well, “not receptive,” as in “not open to new ideas.” This is not the same thing as passive, so we can discard this one.

At this point, without even looking at the passage, we’ve managed to eliminate two of the five answer choices. Now, in Step 2, we take all the answers that survived Step 1 and plug them into the sentence to see which one fits the best. Before we proceed, though, look at the definitions of submissive (B) and supine (D) once more. Notice that they’re virtually the same. Just like emerge and coalesce in question 3.5, these two words are too close in meaning for just one of them to be correct. Since they can’t both be right, they must both be wrong.

Even without that consideration, though, disinterested (A) is our winner here. We’re told that the printmakers “reliably record” what’s going on around them — not that they bend or yield (B, D) to rulers, the Church, or any other kind of authority.

Vocab Notes

Struggling to remember the meaning of supine? Med students use this mnemonic: the hand is in supine position when you can scoop soup with it (i.e., when the palm is upward). The opposite of supine is prone, which means “lying face down.”

By the way, disinterested is not the same thing as uninterested, at least for GRE purposes. If you’re disinterested, you’re impartial — you don’t have a direct stake (an interest) in the outcome. Uninterested means you don’t care — you lack interest in what’s going on.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.23: Renaissance Prints, pt. 1

Here we have an example of another common Reading Comprehension format. I call this one the “triple true/false” because it presents three answer choices, each of which has to be evaluated separately. Usually, as in this case, the goal is to determine whether each statement is supported by the passage.

The key here is to distinguish between the “orthodox position” and the other positions described in the passage. The “orthodox position” is explained in ll. 4-8. Later on, we learn about a different position — the one taken by art historians Scribner and Moxey. We know that their work is unorthodox for two reasons: it’s contrasted with the orthodox position (l. 9), and the author calls it “pioneering” (also l. 9), which means “novel” or “innovative.”

Now let’s look at the answers. We’re in luck: (A) quotes directly from l. 4, which is part of the description of the “orthodox” view. Similarly, answer (C) just restates ll. 5-7, which also belong to the orthodox position. So both of these answer choices are correct.

What about (B), though? It too quotes from the text (ll. 17-18), but if we read through those last lines carefully, we see that (B) is the opinion of Scribner — the “pioneering” or unorthodox researcher — rather than the orthodox view. This is a devious little move on the GRE’s part, and we’ll see it again in future questions. To avoid falling for it, remember: if a passage introduces multiple viewpoints, we need to be clear about who said what.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.2: “Most spacecraft…”

The first clause describes an orbital environment that presents little risk to spacecraft. For our blank, then, we might say that the environment is becoming less safe or less low-risk. (Remember, when pre-filling blanks, aim for accuracy, not elegance.) The closest match for safe is benign (E), in the sense of “not harmful.” Crowded (A) and polluted (D) are the opposite of what we want. Invulnerable (B) and protected (C) might seem like attractive options; these words would aptly describe the spacecraft, but not the environment.

Vocab Notes

Most people have encountered the word benign in the context of medicine. When describing an illness or tumor, benign means “not seriously harmful” and is the opposite of malignant. But this is a specialized meaning. In general, benign has a stronger positive connotation; it means “gentle and kind.” So, for example, someone who “exerts a benign influence” is doing something good, and not merely refraining from doing harm.

This page is part of my unofficial solutions manual to the GRE Paper Practice Book (2e), a free resource available on the ETS website. They publish the questions; I explain the answers. If you haven’t worked through the Practice Book, give Section 3 a shot before reading this!

3.1: “Many find it strange …”

Our clue in this Text Completion problem is tortuous, which literally means “full of twists and turns.” When used to describe a piece of writing, it means “lengthy and complicated.” Before we look at the answers, we want to fill in the blank with our own best guess. In this case, that would be something that means the opposite of tortuous: straightforward or simple. Of the choices given here, only clear (E) shares that meaning.

Even if you’re not sure exactly what tortuous means, you may be aware that it has a negative connotation; that is, it’s not a good thing for writing to be tortuous. On this logic, people rightly exclude tedious (B; “dull and repetitive”) and possibly painstaking (A; see below). But what about insightful (C) and sophisticated (D), both of which have a positive connotation? We can weed these out by using a compatibility test:

Can a piece of writing be insightful and tortuous at the same time? Absolutely.
How about sophisticated and tortuous? Again, yes.

Since we already know that the correct answer means “not tortuous,” (C) and (D) must be incorrect.

Vocab Notes

Be careful to distinguish between tortuous and torturous. The latter means “characterized by cruel pain or suffering.” (Mnemonic: the extra r in torturous stands for “rack.”)

Note also that painstaking (A) means “involving care and diligence,” not “painful” as is sometimes thought. (This is one case where etymology can help you to lock in the correct meaning of the word.) When asked to hyphenate this word, students often write “pain-staking,” conjuring up images of Dracula or maybe of a painful gambling loss. In fact, the word painstaking comes from pains-taking, and to take pains to do something is to do it with great care. The original phrase rarely appears in contemporary writing, but the compound word painstaking survives.