In the following passage, some words have been deleted. Read the passage carefully and select the most appropriate option to fill in each blank. Americans have been arguing about pandemic (1) ________________ for two years, and the debate is particularly fraught among parents of small children, for good reasons. While (2) ____________ such as masking and isolation mean temporary discomfort or inconvenience for most people, their (3) _______________ for still-developing young children are more mysterious, and possibly more significant and lasting. Children with speech or language disorders offer perhaps the (4) _____________ example of these murky trade-offs. Pandemic restrictions vary by state, county and school district, but I spoke with parents in California, New York, Massachusetts, Washington, New Jersey, Iowa and Maryland, who said their children’s speech therapy has been (5) ______________: first by the loss of in-person therapy and then by masking requirements, in places that have them.
Select the most appropriate option to fill in blank no. 4.
- (a)indistinct
- (b)nebulous
- (c)clearest
- (d)vague
Answer
Why
Correct — C. Read the sentence's own contrast: children with speech disorders offer 'perhaps the ______ example of these murky trade-offs'.
An example is offered to make something plain, so the blank has to mean clear, not unclear — the sharpest instance of a murky problem. 'Perhaps the clearest example' is the reading the sentence sets up.
The option set confirms it. Indistinct, nebulous and vague all mean unclear, and one question cannot have three answers. Option (c) is the outlier and the key.
Why the others are wrong
- (a)indistinct — Indistinct means blurred or hard to make out. An example that cannot be made out teaches nothing, and it would repeat the murkiness the sentence is trying to cut through.
- (b)nebulous — Nebulous means hazy or ill-defined. It repeats 'murky' from the same sentence instead of contrasting with it, which is what an example is there to do.
- (d)vague — Vague is a third word for unclear. Three options that mean the same thing cannot any of them be the answer, since only one option can be right.
Concept
Two moves settle this blank, and neither needs hard vocabulary.
The sense: an example is there to make something plain, and the passage calls these trade-offs murky. The blank wants a word for clarity, set against the murk the example is chosen to illuminate.
The synonym cluster: indistinct, nebulous and vague are near-synonyms of each other. A four-option item cannot have three right answers, so the odd one out is where the key sits. Look for the cluster before you look up the words.
The sentence deliberately sets a clear example against murky trade-offs, so the contrast is inside this one sentence rather than spread across the passage.
Key facts
- A superlative takes 'the' — the clearest example, the most obvious case — but 'the' on its own does not call for one: 'the indistinct example' is ordinary English.
- One-syllable adjectives form the superlative with -est: clear becomes clearest, and vague becomes vaguest.
- Indistinct, nebulous and vague all mean unclear or ill-defined.
Study next
Common traps
- Picking 'nebulous' because it echoes 'murky' in the same sentence and reads as the stylish choice.
- Looking each word up on its own and never noticing that three of the four mean the same thing.
Blank 4 here is loaded with three near-synonyms and one outlier, so the odd one out is where the key sits. Blank 5, Q.25, is instead settled by the two causes listed after the colon.
Related PYQs
No directly related past PYQ was found.