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You are making the same mistake, I made when I first saw this question.
About the source - it is from ofline training, which contained questions from OG, Manhattan, Kaplan and, maybe, something else, so I can not tell the original source, sorry. But the answer providied is correct.

During the summer of 1988, the reason for virtually every unusual wether condition, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms, was said to be caused by El Nino

(A) said to be caused by - yes, too wordy, but the main problem is redundancy - you can not have reason and caused here
(B) blamed on - sure, we are talking about reasons and have not purpose to blame something
(C) attributed to - what do we attribute to what? reason to El Nino? it does not make sense
(D) supposed to be due to - wordy, but, actually it is redundancy to - the reason because of El Nino - wrong
(E) said to be - Correct. Why do we have to complicate things? Yes. El Nino is a reason for every unusual whether condition. Makes sense.
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During the summer of 1998, the reason for virtually every unusual weather condition, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms, was said to be caused by El Nino.

A. said to be caused by
B. blamed on
C. attributed to
D. supposed to be due to
E. said to be
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IMHO E).The use of the word reason warrants,for the underlined portion, not having a word similar in meaning to the word reason.
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DharLog
During the summer of 1998, the reason for virtually every unusual weather condition, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms was said to be caused by El Nino.

A. said to be caused by
B. blamed on
C. attributed to
D. supposed to be due to
E. said to be

will go with E
A-Redundant
B-reason was blamed on --awkward
C-attributed to means as a result of --Redundant
D-Redundant --due to --reason
E-Correct.
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Sorry very much!!

Of course the right answer is E.

The expalanation to all options is given above.
We can say that they are all redundant, except for E.
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DharLog
During the summer of 1998, the reason for virtually every unusual weather condition, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms was said to be caused by El Nino.

A. said to be caused by
B. blamed on
C. attributed to
D. supposed to be due to
E. said to be


There is an error in the question on punctuation. Please correct it.
If there is no error, Please do advice me.

if there were a comma before was: i would definitely agree that
In statement 'The reason for Y was attributed to X '
Is redundant as reason itself says attributing.

However,
The reason for X was said to be Y is a bit more causal than formal

Hi daagh Sir,
May i know whether the sentence:

The reason for X was said to be Y is correct in GMAT ?
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Can any one plz xplain the options plz

Sent from my SM-J700F using GMAT Club Forum mobile app
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vineethk929
Can any one plz xplain the options plz

Sent from my SM-J700F using GMAT Club Forum mobile app

Sobby has explained these options. I will repeat in a similar way.

----------------
During the summer of 1998, the reason for virtually every unusual weather condition, from droughts and heat waves to floods and storms , was said to be caused by El Nino.

A. said to be caused by - when you have "reason" and "caused by" - it is redundancy. You need only one "reason"
B. blamed on - "reason" is independent individual part, how can it be blamed on?
C. attributed to - the same as in B - how can be the "reason" attributed to?
D. supposed to be due to - "due to" repeats the "reason" - redundancy
E. said to be - perfect
El Nino is the reason for droughts and so on - sounds good, logical, right.
--------------

2 main parts here are:
1. "the reason"
2. our underlined part




Nightmare, about your question.

-------
There is an error in the question on punctuation. Please correct it.
If there is no error, Please do advice me.

if there were a comma before was: i would definitely agree that
In statement 'The reason for Y was attributed to X '
Is redundant as reason itself says attributing.

However,
The reason for X was said to be Y is a bit more causal than formal

Hi daagh Sir,
May i know whether the sentence:

The reason for X was said to be Y is correct in GMAT ?
---------------

You are right, there is a comma before "was", thank you.
About other nuances I would like to say that maybe it is not a typical GMAT question, but it illustrates very well the question of redundancy. And this is tha most important issue here. But of course would like to hear from experts too.
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I do not think this question is up to GMAT standard. It is safe to avoid reading too much into this question.
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(A) said to be ((caused by)) - redundant. Hence, incorrect.

(B) blamed on - reason was blamed on El Nino. Doesn't make sense.

(C) attributed to - reason was attributed to ?? Redundant.

(D) supposed to be ((due to)) - same as A.

(E) said to be - correct. Reason was said to be El Nino.

Thus, E is best.

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Hi GMATNinja MikeScarn daagh - Could you please provide an explanation for this question? Many thanks for your help.
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