An English Test
This is a change in pace from the usual math or logic puzzles. When it appeared in our paper several years ago, most of the 500 who replied got 7/10 right, a few dozen got 8/10, five people got 9/10, and only one, a former copy editor of the paper, got them all right. So this is HARD. Let's approach it as a group problem. Post solutions to each question separately, making it easier to track followup questions.
Ten quotes follow. In nine of them, a word is used incorrectly. Identify the misused word in each, what should have been said, and which statement is correct as is. (Note: you may feel that some of these could have been written more clearly, but that is not the issue; we are looking for the misused word.)
1. Halfway round the world that same day, workers at the United States Embassy in Riyadh, Saudi Arabia, also unable to obtain their usual newspapers, poured over similar printouts, which are produced on sheets about the size of a tabloid newspaper.
2. John Heimlich, an economist for the Air Transport Association, a Washington-based industry trade group, said the airlines could try to use stock options to convince the government to offer longer-term loans or better interest rates.
3. "Sometimes when you make a lot of changes, it takes time for a team to gel," right fielder Brian Jordan said.
4. While they grope for answers to Japan's mounting economic problems, the country has been stricken by a series of random calamities, including several grizzly murders and the sinking of a school ship near Hawaii.
5. The Catholic children had to run a gantlet of stone-throwing Protestant protesters for a third day as they walked to school.
6. They reportedly noticed white powder on the mail stacked on the palates and notified their supervisor, who contacted authorities.
7. The forum and its elite agents of global capitalism had come under siege in recent years by unruly hoards of antiglobalization protesters.
8. Giants owner Peter Magowan's remarks were halted by a growing chant of "Sign him, sign him," an illusion to Bonds' contract, which expires this weekend.
9. "If it hadn't been for my father getting a wild hare on the day I was born to invest in IBM and Coca-Cola, we probably wouldn't be in the situation we're in," she said.
10. It has been a torturous legal process that began in May 1998 when the Justice Department and 19 state attorneys general sued Microsoft, saying it illegally thwarted competition.