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TBT

"Must" can have more than one meaning when we are talking about the future, but when we are talking about the past, it is used only to indicate the belief that something did/did not happen. So in D, the author is saying "Apparently we did not work all hours on this, because the meeting was cancelled." This doesn't make sense, whereas it makes perfect sense to say that we didn't NEED to work so much, since the meeting did not occur.

Two other notes:

1) When we talk about the present, "must" works similarly: we are saying that something surely IS happening. When we talk about the future, it is different. It means that something is required ("You must not leave the building") or recommended ("You simply must see that new play!").

2) A real GMAT SC question will not be in first person, so we normally won't have someone reasoning about their own behavior. That's part of what creates the funny meaning in D, since surely the author already knows how long they did or did not work, and does not need to guess about it.
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DmitryFarber
TBT

"Must" can have more than one meaning when we are talking about the future, but when we are talking about the past, it is used only to indicate the belief that something did/did not happen. So in D, the author is saying "Apparently we did not work all hours on this, because the meeting was cancelled." This doesn't make sense, whereas it makes perfect sense to say that we didn't NEED to work so much, since the meeting did not occur.

Two other notes:

1) When we talk about the present, "must" works similarly: we are saying that something surely IS happening. When we talk about the future, it is different. It means that something is required ("You must not leave the building") or recommended ("You simply must see that new play!").

2) A real GMAT SC question will not be in first person, so we normally won't have someone reasoning about their own behavior. That's part of what creates the funny meaning in D, since surely the author already knows how long they did or did not work, and does not need to guess about it.
DmitryFarber How do you qualify Option (A)? It seems to convey the intended meaning quite clearly and the grammar looks in place too.
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PyjamaScientist

That's funny--I was so narrowly focused on the question I was responding to that I didn't really take a good look at the full set of answers. Yeah, this is in no way a valid SC question. For one thing, "needn't" isn't really standard usage in the US. Second, you could make a strong case that A and B mean exactly the same thing. The author is probably trying to convey the difference between "this wasn't required" and "it turned out not to have been necessary," but the difference in wording here doesn't actually achieve that. Yet again, we are better off studying real OG questions!
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