PP1 (Shorter) Verbal Section 1 (Medium) Q9

<p><span style="font-size:20px;"><span style="color:#8e44ad;">Pairing Up</span></span></p> <p>First things first. We use the <strong>Pairing Strategy</strong> to identify any synonym pairs among the six answer choices. There are usually two, sometimes one, sometimes three. We call the &quot;triple pair&quot; the <a href="https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=I0Sxxibos-I" target="_blank">Great White Buffalo</a>.</p> <ul> <li><strong>Only One Pair</strong>:&nbsp;mendacity/prevarication <ul> <li>In cases such as these, we don&#39;t even have to justify our answer with logic, but we should anyway. What if we made a mistake in pairing?</li> </ul> </li> </ul> <p>The words aspiration, insensitivity, baseness, and avarice have no pair, so we cross them out: <span style="color:#e74c3c;"><strike>aspiration</strike></span>, <span style="color:#e74c3c;"><s>insensitivity</s></span>, <span style="color:#e74c3c;"><s>baseness</s></span>, and <span style="color:#e74c3c;"><s>avarice</s></span>.</p> <p><span style="font-size:20px;"><span style="color:#27ae60;">The Right Answer</span></span></p> <p>Use <strong><span style="color:#8e44ad;">Math Strategy</span></strong> here. The phrase &quot;even in&quot; indicates that the two ideas contrast each other. The second idea (the first idea has the blank, so we focus on the second idea first) says that &quot;lying is NOT found...&quot; Thus, the first idea has to be the opposite of this -- &quot;lying IS found,&quot; or &quot;lying is part of everyday life.&quot; Thus, we guess the word &quot;lying&quot; for the blank.</p> <p>The best match for this guess is the pair <span style="color:#27ae60;">mendacity/prevarication</span>.</p> <p><span style="font-size:20px;"><span style="color:#e74c3c;">The Wrong Answers</span></span></p> <p>No other word has a synonym pair, so they&#39;re all wrong.</p>