GMAT Club World Cup 2022 (DAY 4): Down to its last three stores, the o

Hello again. Several days into the competition, you should start to have a feel for the questions, what it takes to successfully answer them. As I have done in previous SC posts, I will strip this sentence down bit by bit to see which answer choice is the safest of the five presented. It does not have to be ideal. It just has to be functional and better than the rest at conveying the vital meaning.

Split #1: if versus yet versus and

Hands down, if is the idiomatic winner of the bunch. The non-underlined portion of the sentence presents a picture of a failing retail chain, so the announcement, while grim in nature, may not be much of a surprise. That is, if a once nationwide retail chain is down to its last three stores, the writing is probably on the wall, and since stores do not tend to close across the nation all at once, again, the announcement might not be unexpected. A grim if somewhat anticipated announcement perfectly describes the situation. The contrast is preserved in yet, though to a native English speaker, it might not roll off the tongue as well. And is the outlier, since it presents no contrast, but rather reports two pieces of information—there was a grim announcement, and (probably in light of the fact that so many stores were closing around the nation) the announcement was anticipated. This last interpretation is my least favorite, but I would not take answer choice (D) to the chopping block over the conjunction.

Split #2: that it planned versus it planned

There is a misconception that that cannot follow a colon because such writing creates a redundancy. One of my worst interactions on GMAT Club came about when I responded to a third-party question that hinged on this very point. At the time, I was the only person to have answered the question correctly, and I jotted down my thoughts on each answer choice to explain what had guided my decision. Perhaps I came across as arrogant. The community jumped all over me with the above claim, and I wasted many more posts defending my original position and calling in other Experts, none of whom responded to my distress signal, at least at first. I eventually tracked down this GMAT Prep SC question that serves as proof that that can follow a colon. I am not sure where this supposed rule comes from. (Anyway, in case you want to hear the end of my story, my original post in that thread remains criticized, with not a single kudos to show for its merits.)

In the sentence at hand, the full embedded clause, that and all, makes sense to convey that the retailer made a grim if somewhat anticipated announcement that it planned to do something. A colon does not replace that. Would I get rid of the latter three answer choices for the omission of that? No. I like to be conservative when it comes to making eliminations, as the analysis above for split #1 should attest.

Split #3: three parallel actions versus two plus a modifying phrase

Answer choices (A), (C), and (D) take the former path, while (B) and (E) take the latter, and this should prove a more decisive split than the two above. Does it make sense to place a modifier at the end of the sentence?

(B)/(E): [The retailer] planned to shut its doors and liquidate all its assets, selling to the highest takeover bid/bidder

Selling is difficult to make sense of in this context. Is the retailer selling its assets to the highest bid or bidder, or, more along the lines of takeover, its entire brand? I suppose there is a third possibility. If the modifier is commenting on the previous clause, then both the brand and the assets will go to the highest takeover bid or bidder. Still, something about the pairing of liquidate its assets and takeover does not quite sit well with me. A liquidation tends to precede a final takeover by another business. But why am I fussing about all these considerations when I have a perfectly reasonable list of actions in answer choices (A), (C), and (D)? Planned to shut, liquidate, and sell presents three parts of a single plan in a clearcut manner. In short, I would eliminate answer choices (B) and (E) for lack of clarity.

Split #4: bidder versus bid

We do read about takeover bids in the business world, but selling to a bid does not make sense. The retailer would need to sell to a bidder instead. We can make quick work of answer choices (B) and (C) on this consideration.

Between the original sentence and (D), I have no doubts against two. There is no compelling reason to use and in the beginning, and that after the colon actually makes more sense to convey what the retailer announced. (I doubt that most people studying for the GMAT™ would favor a sentence that read, The retailer announced it planned…)

The best answer is (A), the original sentence. It is free of errors, is clear, follows a parallel construct, and is logically sound. What is not to like? In sum:


Good luck with your studies.

- Andrew