The ancient Romans piped hot water through the walls and under the flo

Would it be correct , if option C were
'to warm up the rooms' ?

I picked C over D since it's more concise.

I don't see any reason why C is wrong.

C although coincise, is awkward.
D and E use "so that" and "in order" which both are right. I will choose D over E.

I read on testmagic that split infinitives aren't always wrong in gmat..
however in this case, it's wrong..

The ancient Romans piped hot water through the walls and under the floors so as to warm up the rooms.

A. so as to warm up the rooms
Correct idiom should be so X and to Y
B. and so would be able to warm up the rooms
Wrong placement of "so"
C. to warm the rooms up
"up" should be after "warm"
D. so that they could warm up the rooms
CORRECT usage of "so" for the cause and effect relationship
E. in order that they would warm up the rooms
wrong "that" after "in order"; wrong use of "would"

"So as to" is wrong on the GMAT.

It needs So + Adjective + as to
e.g. ....so hot as to burn my mouth.

C) is wrong since "warm the room up" is unidiomatic. You "warm up the room".
E) B) awkward and lengthy as has already been pointed out above.

Those whoe think that D is the answer , whats dose "they" in D option refers to ??


does it refers to Romans, walls or floors??

garima,

In Ron's words:

"this question is horrible. you should run away from this source as fast as you can. don't look back.

you could argue for any one of (a), (c), or (d) here. all are acceptable.
if this were an official problem, it would say something like "in order to warm the rooms".

:D is this from 1000 SC?

Thanks mundasingh for posting the link for Ron's reply. I also found a nice explanation of so as to usage on the link. Thought i'd post it here for everyone's review:

so as to : we need a verb after this.
so that : we need a subject after this, or u can say that a clause after so that.

now when you use "so as to", make sure there is only one AGENT before so as to.

here,
The ancient [Romans] piped hot water through [the walls] and under [the floors] so as to warm up the rooms

Can you see here we have 4 agents
romans
walls
floors
walls and floors

so This creates AMBIGUITY.

Best replacement of 'so as to' is 'so that'.
CLAUSE_1 so that CLAUSE_2
subject of CLAUSE_1 is subject of CLAUSE_2
so in ur question, "they" refers to Romans.

Its clear and the answer.
I hope it helps.

example:
I study a lot so as to score high on GMAT.
only one AGENT here, "I"

Hello

The reason C is wrong coz it says To warm the room up

You don"t need Up or Down after warm.
Warm word itself means the temp will rise. It dosen't require up.

VeritasKarishma zhanbo generis
GMATNinja : could you advise on why option D is correct .. I am not able to understand what does 'they' in option D refers to
IMO A should be correct choice

I second you man!
So as to defines purpose. And option A uses the idiom "so as to" perfectly for that purpose.

I think A is better than D. And since the question is from a non-official source, I advise let's skip this one.

Hi,

I think we can observe that the sentence can be deduced to this form.

The ancient Romans piped hot water through the walls and under the floors so that they could warm up the rooms.

It makes sense now to what "THEY" refers to (i.e Ancient Romans),

please correct me if I am wrong.

Hello Pranaybhonagiri,

We hope this finds you well.

To answer your query, your reasoning is correct here.

However, a simpler way to determine which noun "they" refers to is through logic; "Romans" is the noun that makes the most sense in this context because it is not logical to say that the "walls" or the "floors" are heating the rooms.

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