Those are fun. Just got through the first one with 17 total tries (most of which were on the 8th question).
Some of them are dubious, though, IMO. For example:
> The total amount available to |disperse| will be $150 million annually.
I guess in a journalism context more people are talking about disbursing than dispersing, but how am I supposed to know that? For all I know this sentence comes from an article about wanting to "scatter" that money.
EDIT: another example from the second quiz:
> Republicans will not like many of these proposals, but they have been |fulsome| in their praise of Mr. Trump since his election. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, for instance, has repeatedly said that he expects Mr. Trump to work with Republicans on their agenda of rolling back the Affordable Care Act and making large-scale changes to the tax code and entitlements.
The explanation for why "fulsome" is wrong here was that "this word means not just “full” or “abundant” but “offensively excessive.”". How am I supposed to know "offensively excessive" wasn't the intended meaning here? I ended up picking it simply because it came across as a bit too pretentious, but not before I picked "instance" for the same reason ("for instance" instead of "for example" bugs me a bit).
"For example" and "for instance" are often used interchangeably, but do have some nuance between them. "For example" is broader, indicating a description of a class or category being described. "For instance" is narrower in scope, referring to a specific instance in the large class described by the example. Additionally, "for example" would be appropriate to use when creating a hypothetical, but "for instance" should always refer to something real - a concrete member of a class or category or an exemplary event which has occurred.
> How am I supposed to know "offensively excessive" wasn't the intended meaning here?
I'm guessing if it were the intended meaning, "but" would be incorrect in "Republicans will not like many of these proposals, but they have been fulsome in their praise of Mr. Trump since his election"
I mean, if it's "offensively excessive" from the writer's point of view, then I feel like it'd make sense even with the "but"; that's indeed how I took the sentence to mean.
Some of them are dubious, though, IMO. For example:
> The total amount available to |disperse| will be $150 million annually.
I guess in a journalism context more people are talking about disbursing than dispersing, but how am I supposed to know that? For all I know this sentence comes from an article about wanting to "scatter" that money.
EDIT: another example from the second quiz:
> Republicans will not like many of these proposals, but they have been |fulsome| in their praise of Mr. Trump since his election. Speaker Paul D. Ryan, for instance, has repeatedly said that he expects Mr. Trump to work with Republicans on their agenda of rolling back the Affordable Care Act and making large-scale changes to the tax code and entitlements.
The explanation for why "fulsome" is wrong here was that "this word means not just “full” or “abundant” but “offensively excessive.”". How am I supposed to know "offensively excessive" wasn't the intended meaning here? I ended up picking it simply because it came across as a bit too pretentious, but not before I picked "instance" for the same reason ("for instance" instead of "for example" bugs me a bit).