Bunuel wrote:
In an attempt to report a burglary in progress, the neighbor phoned the local police station multiple
times, but inexplicably they did not answer the call and therefore did not make it to the house before the burglars left.
A. times, but inexplicably they did not answer the call
B. times, but inexplicably the call was not answered by them
C. times; inexplicably they did not answer the call
D. times, but inexplicably the officers did not answer the call
E. times, inexplicably not answered by the officers
VERITAS PREP OFFICIAL SOLUTION:
As soon as you see pronouns in the underlined or non-underlined portion, you should focus on those as a primary decision point. In this example, three of the answer choices contain a pronoun (“they” or “them” in (A), (B), and (C)) and the others do not (“officers” is used instead). Whenever you are given this omission of pronouns in certain answer choices, you should consider the possibility of a reference error, as the pronouns might be problematic. In (A), (B), and (C) there is nothing in the sentence for the pronoun to refer to! A “police station” cannot answer a call and the agreement would be off as well. As a result the answer must be (D) or (E). (E) incorrectly uses a participial modifier “not answered” which has nothing to modify and then the portion at the end of the sentence “did not make it” lacks a subject. Correct answer is (D), which eliminates the pronoun error and uses a logical structure to complete the rest of the sentence.