Fill in the Blanks Questions and Answers

Answer: B

The idiom is 'burst into flames'. 'Burst in' means to enter suddenly and does not take 'flames'. 'Burst onto' is used for appearing suddenly, as on a scene. 'Bursts out' has a third person singular verb that does not agree with 'The jeep crashed and', which is in the past tense. Only 'burst into' completes the sentence correctly. The same phrase appears in 'the car burst into flames', which is the common use of the idiom after a crash.

Answer: C

The right order is sent, cent, scent. The friend 'sent' (past tense of send) a gift, the gift was worth 99 'cent', and it was imported 'scent', meaning perfume. The words are homophones, so only their meanings fix the order. 'Sent' cannot be the object, 'scent' cannot be the verb, and 'cent' cannot be the gift, so the other orders do not make sense. In the sentence 'sent' is the verb, 'cent' the unit of money and 'scent' the perfume, so each of these three words fits only one blank.

Answer: C

The phrase is bear with: the chairman asked the shareholders to bear with him.

To bear with someone is to be patient with them, which fits a chairman facing aggrieved shareholders. Bear here is the verb meaning to tolerate or endure.

Bare means to uncover or expose, so 'bare with' and 'bare' are homophone errors. Bore is the past tense of bear (or a verb meaning to drill or to weary someone), and 'requested ... to bore with him' is ungrammatical after 'to', which needs the base form.

Answer: D

The blanks take complemented, complimented.

Complement means to go well with something or complete it, so a dress that suits its wearer complemented her. Compliment means to praise, so the onlookers complimented her on her appearance. The two verbs sound the same and differ by one letter, which is the whole test.

'Complemented' in the second blank would say the people completed her appearance, not that they praised it. 'Complimented' in the first blank would have the dress praising her. That rules out every pairing except the one that uses complemented first and complimented second.

Answer: A

The word is undiminished.

The sentence turns on though: the judge's standing was shaken by false allegations, though it still remained something. A concessive clause sets up a contrast, so the blank must say that the standing survived the attack intact. Undiminished, not reduced in any way, gives exactly that contrast.

'Damaged' and 'uncertain' agree with 'shaken' instead of contrasting with it, so the 'though' would make no sense. 'Illegal' does not describe a person's standing in a community at all, and the allegations were false.

Answer: B

The blank takes the possessive determiner your: “Send your contributions at the earliest.”

The word in the blank must qualify the noun contributions, so it has to be a possessive form. Your is the possessive of you.

You are and its contraction you’re are subject and verb, which make no sense before a noun here (“Send you are contributions”). Yore is an archaic noun meaning long ago, as in “days of yore”, and only sounds like your. The question tests exactly this set of homophones.

Answer: C

The best fit is (i) down (ii) out (iii) for (iv) on.

Each blank completes an idiom with 'head': to keep one's head down is to stay quiet and avoid attention or distraction; to head out is to set off (here, to bat); to have a head for something is to have a natural aptitude for it; and a cool head on one's shoulders means calm good sense.

'Head down to bat' does not mean setting off to bat, 'a head on batting' is not idiomatic, and 'a cool head for his shoulders' makes no sense. Keeping one's head 'on' before batting is also not the idiom intended. Only the combination down, out, for, on gives four correct idioms.

Answer: B

The sentence needs had been playing.

The rain 'suddenly started' at a moment in the past, and the playing was already in progress at that moment. An action continuing up to a past point is expressed by the past perfect continuous: 'We had been playing tennis in the lawn when it suddenly started to rain.'

'Have been playing' is the present perfect continuous, which links the action to the present and clashes with the past tense 'started'. 'Would have been playing' describes a hypothetical situation, and 'could be playing' a present possibility, neither of which fits a narrative of what actually happened.

Answer: A

The answer is exaggerates; engenders.

The manager's next sentence, 'False claims are not going to help', tells us the first blank describes inflating the figures: to exaggerate the numbers is to overstate them. The second sentence states what honesty produces, and engender means to give rise to or create, so 'Honesty engenders trust' completes the thought.

The other pairs fail. 'Excels the numbers' is not idiomatic and is not a false claim. 'Aggravates the numbers' misuses aggravate (to make worse), and honesty does not 'alleviate' trust, since alleviate means to lessen something bad. 'Diminishes' would be understating, not a false boast, and honesty does not 'eliminate' trust.

Answer: C

The sentence reads If I were you, I wouldn't buy that laptop.

'If I were you' is a second conditional: an imagined situation, marked by the past subjunctive were. The main clause of a second conditional takes would plus the bare verb, here in the negative because the reason given is that the laptop is too expensive.

'won't buy' and 'shan't buy' are future forms, which belong to a first conditional ('If I go, I won't buy'), not to an unreal 'If I were'. 'would buy' has the right form but the wrong sense: nobody advises buying something because it is much too expensive.