ID: 359902ae
The following text is adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1837 story “Dr. Heidegger’s Experiment.” The main character, a
physician, is experimenting with rehydrating a dried flower.
At first [the rose] lay lightly on the surface of the fluid, appearing to imbibe none of its moisture. Soon, however, a
singular change began to be visible. The crushed and dried petals stirred and assumed a deepening tinge of
crimson, as if the flower were reviving from a deathlike slumber.
As used in the text, what does the phrase “a singular” most nearly mean?
A. A lonely
B. A disagreeable
C. An acceptable
D. An extraordinary
ID: c977cfcf
According to a team of neuroeconomists from the University of Zurich, ease of decision making may be linked to
communication between two brain regions, the prefrontal cortex and the parietal cortex. Individuals tend to be more
decisive if the information flow between the regions is intensified, whereas they make choices more slowly when
information flow is ______.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. reduced
B. evaluated
C. determined
D. acquired
ID: 1c7fe9be
At the turn of the twentieth century, Black residents of Richmond, Virginia, had few formal options for banking and other
financial services. To ______ this situation, Maggie Lena Walker chartered the St. Luke Penny Savings Bank in 1903. The
bank went on to provide home loans and savings opportunities to thousands of Black families over the following
decades.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. prolong
B. rectify
C. retain
D. highlight
ID: 757077f9
During a 2014 archaeological dig in Spain, Vicente Lull and his team uncovered the skeleton of a woman from El Algar, an
Early Bronze Age society, buried with valuable objects signaling a high position of power. This finding may persuade
researchers who have argued that Bronze Age societies were ruled by men to ______ that women may have also held
leadership roles.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. waive
B. concede
C. refute
D. require
ID: 84ece3f6
The following text is adapted from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s 1844 short story “Drowne’s Wooden Image.” Drowne, a young
man, is carving a wooden figure to decorate the front of a ship.
Day by day, the work assumed greater precision, and settled its irregular and misty outline into distincter grace and
beauty. The general design was now obvious to the common eye.
As used in the text, what does the word “assumed” most nearly mean?
A. Acquired
B. Acknowledged
C. Imitated
D. Speculated
ID: be612a26
Recent measurements of the mass of the W boson (a subatomic particle) were notable not only for the mere fact that the
particle’s mass differed from expectations but for the ______ of that difference: the measured mass of the W boson was
seven standard deviations higher than predicted by the standard model of particle physics.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. cause
B. existence
C. implication
D. scale
ID: 3f37eb3b
People sometimes dismiss a claim if it comes from a source they regard as self-interested, but from a strictly logical
perspective, the source of a claim is ______: it has no direct bearing on whether the claim is true.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. indistinct
B. irrelevant
C. indisputable
D. implicit
ID: 4974b053
Although science fiction was dominated mostly by white male authors when Octavia Butler, a Black woman, began
writing, she did not view the genre as ______: Butler broke into the field with the publication of several short stories and
her 1976 novel Patternmaster, and she later became the first science fiction writer to win a prestigious MacArthur
Fellowship.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. legitimate
PENERTRATE (V)
B. impenetrable
C. compelling
D. indecipherable
ID: 710799ae
Cuttlefish appear to be surprisingly ______ at exercising self-control: in a 2021 study conducted by behavioral ecologist
Alexandra Schnell, these cephalopods routinely demonstrated restraint by delaying gratification, waiting for a favorite
treat instead of instantly devouring a readily available meal.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. awkward
B. imaginative
C. manageable = capable of being controlled
D. competent
ID: 5a278f24
The work of molecular biophysicist Enrique M. De La Cruz is known for ______ traditional boundaries between academic
disciplines. The university laboratory that De La Cruz runs includes engineers, biologists, chemists, and physicists, and
the research the lab produces makes use of insights and techniques from all those fields.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. epitomizing
B. transcending
C. anticipating
D. reinforcing
ID: 9107ad5c
Stars form in cloudlike swirls of gas and dust that cannot be touched‚ but astrophysicist Nia Imara believes these
formations need not remain completely ______ to researchers: she uses simulation data and sophisticated 3D printers to
produce interactive models of these stellar nurseries.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. repeatable
B. explicable
C. regrettable
D. intangible
ID: e0656211
In Nature Poem (2017), Kumeyaay poet Tommy Pico portrays his ______ the natural world by honoring the centrality of
nature within his tribe’s traditional beliefs while simultaneously expressing his distaste for being in wilderness settings
himself.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. responsiveness to
both
B. ambivalence toward
mixed feeling
C. renunciation of
D. mastery over
ID: 9aa44886
The following text is from F. Scott Fitzgerald’s 1925 novel The Great Gatsby.
[Jay Gatsby] was balancing himself on the dashboard of his car with that resourcefulness of movement that is so
peculiarly American—that comes, I suppose, with the absence of lifting work in youth and, even more, with the
formless grace of our nervous, sporadic games. This quality was continually breaking through his punctilious
manner in the shape of restlessness.
As used in the text, what does the word “quality” most nearly mean?
A. Standard
B. Prestige
C. Characteristic
D. Accomplishment
ID: e8c26398
To develop a method for measuring snow depth with laser beams, NASA physicist Yongxiang Hu relied on ______;
identifying broad similarities between two seemingly different phenomena, Hu used information about how ants move
inside colonies to calculate how the particles of light that make up laser beams travel through snow.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. a collaboration
B. an accessory
C. a contradiction
D. an analogy
ID: 4830ab87
The way in which individual elements are balanced within a photographic image tends to affect how viewers perceive it:
symmetry tends to give the elements equal importance, asymmetry emphasizes differences, and radial balance
(organizing the elements around a central point) emphasizes the center over the periphery. What a photograph conveys
is therefore largely ______ how it is balanced.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. inhibited by hinder/ undermine
B. contingent on
C. obligated to
D. reserved for
ID: b44066dc
Economist Jingting Fan argues that the effects of international trade may display spatial variation at sub-national levels.
For instance, imported goods may reduce expenses for a country’s average consumer, but for consumers living far from
ports, high intranational transport costs could ______ the price advantages associated with imports.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. nullify
B. denigrate
C. underestimate
D. misconstrue construe = interpret
ID: 8b46bb51
A journalist and well-respected art critic of nineteenth-century Britain, Lady Elizabeth Rigby Eastlake did not hesitate to
publish reviews that went against popular opinion. One of her most divisive works was an essay questioning the idea of
photography as an emerging medium for fine art: in the essay, Eastlake ______ that the value of photographs was
informational rather than creative.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. exposed
B. asserted
C. discovered
D. doubted
ID: 2e8ab360
Eighteenth-century historian Edward Gibbon thought the only character defect of the Roman emperor Marcus Aurelius
was his mild temperament—though the emperor was widely considered virtuous, his overly permissive nature led him to
______ the vices of those who surrounded him.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. indulge
B. despise
C. moderate
D. criticize
ID: d3ca5d59
Stephen Hannock’s luminous landscape paintings are appealing to viewers but have elicited little commentary from
contemporary critics, a phenomenon that may be due to the very fact that the paintings seem so ______. Many critics
focus their attention on art that is cryptic or overtly challenging.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. innovative
B. subversive
C. profound
D. accessible
ID: c5b1afe5
Bicycle sharing systems allow users to rent a bicycle at one location within a city and return it to any other designated
location in that city, which can cause serious problems of bicycle supply and user demand within the city’s system. Tohru
Ikeguchi uses open-source data and statistical modeling to identify when a high number of users making one-way trips is
likely to leave some locations within the system ______ bicycles and other areas with insufficient supply.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. susceptible to vulnerable to
B. contingent on
C. saturated with
D. depleted of
ID: 81a3a607
In the Indigenous intercropping system known as the Three Sisters, maize, squash, and beans form an ______ web of
relations: maize provides the structure on which the bean vines grow; the squash vines cover the soil, discouraging
competition from weeds; and the beans aid their two “sisters” by enriching the soil with essential nitrogen.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. indecipherable
B. ornamental
C. obscure
D. intricate
ID: 85083d4d
Disproving the common misconception of Native art as ______, the painters whose work appears in the collection at the
National Museum of the American Indian employ a range of styles. There are artists working in the traditional arts of
their specific tribal communities, artists working in European modernist or American abstract expressionist art traditions,
and artists blending various traditions into something wholly new.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. uncontroversial
B. individualistic
C. theoretical
D. homogeneous
ID: dc234d74
The recently observed gamma ray burst GRB 230307A lasted for 200 seconds, ______ for a burst generated by the merger
of neutron stars. Bursts caused by neutron mergers typically last fewer than 2 seconds.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. a coincidence
B. a reprieve
C. an incident
D. an oddity
ID: fce80a36
In 2008 a complete set of ancient pessoi (glass game pieces) was uncovered from beneath a paving stone in modern-
day Israel. Due to their small size, pessoi were easily misplaced, making a whole set a rare find. This has led some
experts to suggest that the set may have been buried intentionally; however, without clear evidence, archaeologists are
left to ______ what happened.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. speculate about
B. dismiss
C. expand on
D. catalog
ID: d4e8662d
The percentage of US forest land that a 2023 federal report identified as being either mature or old growth exceeds other
recent estimates. Given how little ______ there is among scientists regarding the scope of these categories, this
discrepancy shouldn’t be surprising: forest researchers regularly dispute one another’s classifications.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. deliberation
B. vigilance
C. interest
D. consensus
ID: e37b9e34
Some researchers believe that the genes that enable groundhogs and certain other mammals to hibernate through the
winter by slowing their breathing and heart rates and lowering their body temperature may be ______ in humans: present
yet having essentially no effect on our bodily processes.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. decisive
B. lacking
C. variable
D. dormant
ID: 1fa751f1
Handedness, a preferential use of either the right or left hand, typically is easy to observe in humans. Because this trait is
present but less ______ in many other animals, animal-behavior researchers often employ tasks specially designed to
reveal individual animals’ preferences for a certain hand or paw.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. recognizable
B. intriguing
C. significant
D. useful
ID: 62a18353
The following text is adapted from Zora Neale Hurston’s 1921 short story “John Redding Goes to Sea.” John wants to
travel far beyond the village where he lives near his mother, Matty.
[John] had on several occasions attempted to reconcile his mother to the notion, but found it a difficult task. Matty
always took refuge in self-pity and tears. Her son’s desires were incomprehensible to her, that was all.
As used in the text, what does the phrase “reconcile his mother to” most nearly mean?
A. Get his mother to accept
B. Get his mother to apologize for
C. Get his mother to match
D. Get his mother to reunite with
ID: cd2ce51f
Like the 1945 play it reimagines—Federico García Lorca’s The House of Bernarda Alba—Marcus Gardley’s 2014 play The
House That Will Not Stand prominently features women. In both plays, the all-female cast ______ an array of female
characters, including a strong mother and several daughters dealing with individual struggles.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. engulfs
B. encourages
C. comprises
D. provokes
ID: b4c6cff6
The following text is adapted from Karel Čapek’s 1920 play R.U.R. (Rossum’s Universal Robots), translated by Paul Selver
and Nigel Playfair in 1923. Fabry and Busman are telling Miss Glory why their company manufactures robots.
FABRY: One Robot can replace two and a half workmen. The human machine, Miss Glory, was terribly imperfect. It had
to be removed sooner or later.
BUSMAN: It was too expensive.
FABRY: It was not effective. It no longer answers the requirements of modern engineering. Nature has no idea of
keeping pace with modern labor.
As used in the text, what does the word “answers” most nearly mean?
A. Explains
B. Rebuts
C. Defends
D. Fulfills
ID: 6a1194e8
Rydra Wong, the protagonist of Samuel R. Delany’s 1966 novel Babel-17, is a poet, an occupation which, in Delany’s work,
is not ______: nearly a dozen of the characters that populate his novels are poets or writers.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. infallible
B. atypical
C. lucrative
D. tedious
ID: 9c35759f
Novelist N. K. Jemisin declines to ______ the conventions of the science fiction genre in which she writes, and she has
suggested that her readers appreciate her work precisely because of this willingness to thwart expectations and avoid
formulaic plots and themes.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. question
B. react to
C. perceive
D. conform to
ID: 6c64a8f3
Ecologist Exequiel Ezcurra and colleagues found that the inhabitants of the Mexica empire used natural landmarks to
track time with a high degree of ______. By observing the sun’s position in relation to various points on the mountains
surrounding the Basin of Mexico, the Mexica were able to precisely identify the dates when significant events such as
solstices occurred.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. precariousness
B. exactitude
C. resilience
D. inconspicuousness
ID: d7dccee7
In a 2019 study, Jeremy Gunawardena and colleagues found that the single-celled protozoan Stentor roeseli not only uses
strategies to escape irritating stimuli but also switches strategies when one fails. This evidence of protozoans
sophisticatedly “changing their minds” demonstrates that single-celled organisms may not be limited to ______ behaviors.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. aggressive
B. rudimentary
C. evolving
D. advantageous
ID: 1107e7dc
Economists often assert that countries looking to increase their reliance on solar energy should expand their capacity for
storage; having an ample reserve of stored energy can mitigate the effects of ______ solar energy collection caused by
unpredictable shifts in cloud cover and haze.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. developments of
B. fluctuations in
C. calibrations with
D. incentives for
ID: f4166aae
In addition to being an accomplished psychologist himself, Francis Cecil Sumner was a ______ increasing the opportunity
for Black students to study psychology, helping to found the psychology department at Howard University, a historically
Black university, in 1930.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. proponent of
B. supplement to
C. beneficiary of
D. distraction for
ID: 1fbf276a
Interruptions in the supply chain for microchips used in personal electronics have challenged an economist’s assertion
that retailers can expect robust growth in sales of those devices in the coming months. The delays are unlikely to ______
her projection entirely but will almost certainly extend its time frame.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. dispute
B. withdraw
C. underscore
D. invalidate
ID: bce627d9
Mineralogical differences are detectable in samples collected from two locations on the near-Earth asteroid Ryugu, but
such differences may not indicate substantial compositional variations in the asteroid. Cosmochemist Kazuhide
Nagashima and colleagues note that at the small scale of the samples, the distribution of minerals is unlikely to be ______
.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. neglected
B. redundant
C. ongoing
D. uniform
ID: e56b66e5
Set in a world where science fiction tropes exist as everyday realities, Charles Yu’s 2010 novel How to Live Safely in a
Science Fictional Universe traces a time traveler’s quest to find his father. Because the journey at the novel’s center is so
______, with the protagonist ricocheting chaotically across time, the reader often wonders whether the pair will ever be
reunited.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. haphazard
B. premeditated
C. inspirational
D. fruitless
ID: d8d1ecaa
Business researcher Melanie Brucks and colleagues found that remote video conference meetings may be less
conducive to brainstorming than in-person meetings are. The researchers suspect that video meeting participants are
focused on staring at the speaker on the screen and don’t allow their eyes or mind to wander as much, which may
ultimately ______ creativity.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. recommend
B. criticize
C. impede
D. construct
ID: 490b205f
In editor Lisa Yaszek’s introduction to her anthology The Future Is Female! More Classic Science Fiction Stories by Women,
Yaszek identifies an increasing sense of ______ feminist mode of writing in the 1970s, in contrast to many woman-
authored science fiction stories of the 1920s to 1960s whose politics were less deliberately signaled.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. a prudently
B. an overtly
C. a cordially
D. an inadvertently
ID: 94eb800d
For a 2020 exhibition, photographer and neurobiologist Okunola Jeyifous ______ a series of new images based on a
series of alphabet posters from the 1970s known as the “Black ABCs,” which featured Black children from Chicago.
Jeyifous photographed the now-adult models and layered the photos over magnified images of the models’ cells,
resulting in what he called “micro and macro portraiture.”
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. validated
B. created
C. challenged
D. restored
ID: c218cd98
In 1776, the United States sent Benjamin Franklin to France to try to win the country’s support in the United States’ fight
for independence from Great Britain. Franklin was very popular in France. This ______ surely helped him to convince
France to assist the United States.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. thoughtfulness
B. esteem
C. controversy
D. sincerity
ID: d3104a68
Birds sing to communicate over potentially great distances. For this reason, many researchers believe that birds in
densely vegetated habitats generally sing at lower frequencies than birds living in comparatively sparse habitats, since
dense vegetation tends to ______ the distance that high-frequency sounds can travel.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. exceed
B. diminish
C. encompass
D. conceal
ID: 8634bf4a
Diego Velázquez was the leading artist in the court of King Philip IV of Spain during the seventeenth century, but his
influence was hardly ______ Spain: realist and impressionist painters around the world employed his techniques and
echoed elements of his style.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. derived from
B. recognized in
C. confined to
D. repressed by
ID: c843d63c
The artisans of the Igun Eronmwon guild in Benin City, Nigeria, typically ______ the bronze- and brass-casting techniques
that have been passed down through their families since the thirteenth century, but they don’t strictly observe every
tradition; for example, guild members now use air-conditioning motors instead of handheld bellows to help heat their
forges.
Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word or phrase?
A. experiment with
B. adhere to
C. improve on
D. grapple with
