In ETS Example 1, why is the pair 'orthodox' and 'conventional' the most tempting **wrong** answer rather than the correct one?
AThey differ in register and produce sentences of different tones
BThey are antonyms and therefore cannot complete the sentence at all
CThey are clean synonyms but produce sentences that ignore the 'although' flip
DThey share no semantic field and therefore mean entirely different things
Answer & Solution
Correct answer: C. They are clean synonyms but produce sentences that ignore the 'although' flip
Orthodox and conventional are nearly identical in meaning, which is exactly the bait. But the sentence's 'although' demands a word the 'hardly' can negate to undo the 'pioneering ideas' setup, i.e. a synonym of pioneering, not its opposite. The synonym-pair scan picks them; the pivot-aware scan rejects them.
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