Research has shown that the ancient Mesoamerican ballgame did not alwa

Can someone please explain why E is incorrect?

human sacrifice is noun. It should be parallel to other activities.

Gerund (ing form of verb) is not a complete noun as "human sacrifice". Hence E is OUT.

I felt that the gerund form of the verbs in option E need an object.. Hence eliminated E in favour of B.. Is my line of reasoning right?

How is E incorrect option? Cab someone please help me understand

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If taken individually,
- it was often used for entertaining conflicts between warring factions - awkward
- it was often used for exercising conflicts between warring factions - Wrong
- it was often used for worshiping conflicts between warring factions - awkward
- it was often used for resolving conflicts between warring factions - OK

Hence E can be eliminated

A and C have parallelism problems, so they are out. D has an SV agreement problem, ‘ballgame’ is being referred to in the plural. Comma placement in E is poor. It implies that the ballgame was only used in the context of conflicts between tribes and that entertaining, exercising, worshipping, and resolving are all things done to the conflicts. B is the right answer.

Would be terrible if 'it' refers to sacrifice. That ambiguity is quite possible as sacrifice is the closest noun.

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In my view the OA is wrong and many explanations here are unconvincing, answer should be C not B; please let me know why I'm incorrect. My rationales are:
1. there is no parallelism issue for all options, they are all nouns, gerund is a noun, conflict resolution is a compound noun
2. people claim that there is confusion that "worship" applies to resolution; I agree and that's exactly the problem with OA as boldened below
3. the correct idiom should be "used for + v-ing" not "used for + noun", although it is not wrong, just a preference

In conclusion C is the best:
(A) it was often used for entertaining, exercising, worship and conflict resolution between warring factions.
(B) it was often used for entertainment, exercise, worship and conflict resolution between warring factions.
(C) it was often used for entertaining, exercising, worshipping and conflict resolution between factions at war.

> list has clear meaning and the last phrase "between factions at war" is the clearest amongst all

(D) they had often used it for entertaining, exercising, worshipping and resolving conflicts between factions who were at war.
(E) it was often used for entertaining, exercising, worshipping and resolving conflicts between warring factions.

Hello faat99,

We hope this finds you well.

Having gone through the question and your query, we believe we can resolve your doubts.

In Option C, "entertaining", "exercising", "worshipping" are not active verbs, but they are also not gerunds, as they refer to actions. To understand this distinction, please consider these examples -

"For maintaining one's health, exercise is necessary." - here, "maintaining" is not an active verb, as it is part of a modifying phrase, but it is not a gerund.

"The maintaining of one's health requires exercise." - here, "maintaining" is a gerund, as it acts as a noun to play the role of the subject.

Further, the phrase "factions at war" is needlessly wordy, making it inferior to the phrase "warring factions".

We hope this helps.
All the best!
Experts' Global Team

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