Strategy: Predict, Then Pair — and Dodge the Synonym Trap

The Predict-Then-Pair Method

1. Ignore the choices at first. Read the sentence and identify its signal words (the same continuation / contrast / cause-effect families as Text Completion).
2. Predict the meaning the blank must carry, in your own plain words. Note the charge (+ or −).
3. Scan for matches. Go through the six choices and mentally tag each one that matches your prediction.
4. Find the pair. The answer is the two tagged words that are closest in meaning to each other and both fit.
5. Verify by plugging both in. The two completed sentences should be near-interchangeable.

The Signature Trap: The Wrong Synonym Pair

The GRE deliberately plants a pair of words that are synonyms of each other but do not fit the sentence. It is bait for students who look for "two words that match" without first checking that they match the sentence.

Once dismissed as ______ by critics who prized only the grand and the monumental, her miniature sculptures are now studied as masterpieces of compression.

The sentence's logic (contrast: "Once dismissed … now masterpieces") tells you critics once judged the work negatively — as trivial or slight. Predict: "insignificant."

Now imagine the six choices include grandiose and monumental. Those two are synonyms of each other — and the sentence even contains the words "grand" and "monumental," which makes them feel relevant. But they mean the opposite of what a dismissive critic would say. They are the trap pair. The correct pair would be words like negligible and paltry (both meaning trivially small).

Three Rules That Defeat the Trap

• A pair is not the answer just because the two words are synonyms. They must be synonyms and fit the sentence's logic.
• Beware words echoed from the sentence. A choice that repeats vocabulary from the prompt is often there to feel relevant while meaning the wrong thing.
• Eliminate orphans. If a word fits the sentence but no other choice shares its meaning, it cannot be correct — cross it out. Sometimes spotting the orphans is faster than finding the pair.

When Three Words Seem to Fit

Occasionally three choices seem plausible. Two of them will be near-synonyms of each other; the third will be a near-synonym of nothing on the list, or will shade the meaning slightly differently. Choose the two that are closest to each other and to your prediction. If two candidate pairs both seem to work, you have under-specified your prediction — reread the signal words and sharpen it.