Announcing that it had had difficulties reaching a decision because of

Question

Announcing that  it had had difficulties reaching  a decision because of a lack of data, the panel of scientists said it would not meet again until next year.

A. it had had difficulties reaching

B. it has had difficulties reaching

C. it has had difficulties in reaching

D. it had been finding it difficult in reaching

E. they had been finding it difficult to reach

winterschool · Answer

D & E out. 
correct idioms - 'difficulties in reaching'. so A & B out
best choice C

Aditi31 · Answer

I couldn't come up with anything to justify the presence of double past in this question.

RonTargetTestPrep · Answer

This is a textbook use of "had + __ed", for an action/experience ongoing from preceding times up to the PAST time narrated.
Also note "would", which is the past tense of "will" (for a timeframe that was in the future at the time narrated).

If a sentence were narrated from the present, looking into the actual future, then the former relationship would be signified by "has/have + __ed", and the future event would just appear in the ordinary future tense "will + ____": 
 Because we  have had  technical difficulties, we  will not meet  again until next year. 
In developing a better intuition for the tenses that appear in the sentence here, you may find that it helps to start from an understanding of these tenses and then 'project' the sentence 'backward in time', turning "has/have + __ED" into "had + __ED", the present into the past, and the future "will" into the future-from-past-viewpoint "would".

Ved22 · Answer

Its not double past tense bro. One is to indicate possessives of difficulties and the other had for past tense bro

darshakvekaria · Answer

Can someone please explain the answer in detail?
Please and thank you.

arbazfatmi1994 · Answer

WHEN TO USE HAVE HAD & HAD HAD

1. We use have had in the present perfect when the main verb is also “have”:

- I’m not feeling well. I have had a headache all day.
- She has had three children in the past five years.
- We have had some problems with our computer systems recently.
- He has had two surgeries on his back.

2. We use had had in the past perfect when the main verb is also “have”:

- Last weekend I just wanted to relax because I had had a busy week.
- The director told me he had had a meeting with the president.
- We had had some trouble with our washing machine, so we called a repairman.
- She woke up screaming because she had had a bad dream.

I hope it helps!

tayyab2022 · Answer

@AndrewN @Targettestprep @KarimaN @MartyTargetTest Prep Can you please tell why option B is wrong. Although I did it correct but I had a diffculty in understanding why option B is wrong. 
Acorrding to my understanding - "had" + "had" refers to a possessive event / possession which happened in the past and finished in the past. While, has had / have had refers to somthing which is still relateable to to the past. Now here, since we have to show the timing of events with respect to the verb "said" - so the "said" event happened later and the "had" difficulties event happened earlier. Since the "had + dificulties" and finished earlier and only then something was "said" about it that is why to maintain the temporal relationship of events, had had is a better choice compared to has had. But my question / confusion: In what kind of events / situation use of "has had" / "have had" will be preferable to "had had" ? Can it be used to to denote the timing of events where two verbs are used ?

VerbalBot · Answer

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Announcing that it had had difficulties reaching a decision because of

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Announcing that it had had difficulties reaching a decision because of

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