Unsure about big book TC problem

GRE Verbal Problem Solving
1

In recent decades the idea that Cezanne influenced

Cubism has been caught in the ------- between art

historians who credit Braque with its invention and

those who ------- Picasso.

(A) crossfire . . tout

(B) interplay . . advocate

(C) paradox . . prefer

(D) deliberation .. attribute

(E) tussle .. substitute

I chose option D, because I thought it’s a long standing argument for decades and attribute meaning owing the idea to picasso. Please help me understand the logic and the connotation etc.

Thanks!

2

Hey,

A is the only option that fits grammatically and produces a meaningful sentence.

Why D doesn’t work:

  • Lack of grammatical fit: caught in the ‘deliberation’ between - not a good fit grammatically
  • Those who attribute Picasso - does not mean anything. Attribute Picasso to what?

Now that you know it’s A, can you simplify the sentence and tell me what it means?

3

I had an idea that the sentence said that theres been a longstanding “debate” between people who credit braque vs picasso for the invention of Cubism… etc

can you tell me what strategy you used to arrive at your answer. Like Greg says its a math problem, so I need a concrete way of arriving at the answer and not much that sounds right to the ear. I hope that makes sense.

4

If you use math strategy we can say that the first blank will have a negative word (caught in the ____) and the second blank will be positive (with the same meaning as ‘credit’ as in credit Braque). Beyond this, you need to see which words fit in grammatically. Eliminating words that don’t fit in grammatically is a concrete way to solve questions.

Also, out of curiosity, were you quoting Greg in general (about tc) or did he call this specific question a math problem that we can solve using math strategy?