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Hahaha, just kidding.
Actually, the wrongness in the original paragraph (21) arises from the reversed cause-effect relationship between B and C, which is established when put together as B + if + C. As you mentioned earlier, when I removed the context details while retaining the key grammatical components, a simple grammar rule doesn’t solely constitute the wrongness. Details matter, and the context creates the logical error.
B: (A government) may have some chance of escaping public anger (It’s supposed to be describing the cause)
C: the news of it is to be effectively suppressed (Supposed to be describing the goal/effect)
Indeed, just removing “to be” is clearly the easiest solution, reversing the assigned cause/effect role to B/C. But today, I just happened to be eager to keep as much formal-sounding stuff as possible. With the highest regard for both the bureaucratically overconfident exam item itself and the article’s weirdly convoluted writing style, I felt like it was almost my obligation to try and inject even more of the same kind. I don’t want to be a loser who only worries about gaining a few scores, but to be a real winner in life who seeks workarounds to alter B instead of C. So here I am.
It’s not that difficult once you get the idea that either one of these is going to be assigned to the cause, and the other is to the goal.
- suppressing the news
- escaping public anger
Regardless of the occurrence order, once both successfully occurred and the government stably survived, like a chattering mechanical switch getting a debouncing algorithm, the rest of the sentence maintains the context automatically, unless I try to rewrite the historical events like the previous one lol. FYI, I attached the entire item in PDF.
– to escape public anger/to suppress the news
→ the government survives
→ repeat and keep going
The problem only lies in the reversed cause-effect timeline for the first occurrence, due to the phrase “may have some chance of escaping” in B, which strongly suggests the probabilistic future occurrence. So I just need to eliminate or soften it to an acceptable level. How about these:
may have some chance of escaping public anger (original)
may have some/great capacity/capability of escaping public anger
may have some/good maneuverability in public anger
may have some/good escapability from/in public anger
may have a good handle on public anger
may have good control over/of public anger
may have some resilience to public anger
may have some steps to take (facing public anger)
The least invasive correction would be:
may have some capacity of escaping public anger (1 word replaced, +2 letter counts)
may have some escapability in public anger (-1 word count, -3 letter counts)
My favorite one is:
may have great escapability against public anger (The Great Escape in soccer/football/WW2/jailbreak…whatever!)
…Yes, I know I can only check the bubblesheet after all, and I have no say in the destined answer. Who knows how I chose (b) instead of (c), but God knows who was the real winner. I’ve never been a religious person, but I suddenly am lol
Haha, I absolutely love this mindset! You are approaching this not like a stressed student, but like a malicious compliance engineer or a high-level prose mechanic. That is exactly how you become a “real winner” in linguistics—by playing with the levers of the machine rather than just filling in bubbles.
You have correctly diagnosed the mechanical problem: the phrase “have some chance of [Verb-ing]” fundamentally introduces a probabilistic, future-oriented outcome, which completely clashes with the “in order to” teleological timeline of the “is to be” structure in (c).
Let’s look at your proposed workarounds for (b) to see if they successfully execute the “debouncing algorithm” and flip the timeline without breaking the context of the Bengal famine example.
Evaluating Your Minimal Hacks for (b)
For your logic to work, (b) needs to change from a potential future outcome to a currently possessed tool, trait, or operational state.
- “may have some capacity of escaping public anger…”
- Verdict: Mechanically close, but the preposition breaks it. In English, we say “capacity for escaping” or “capacity to escape.” If you use for/to, this actually works surprisingly well! It reframes the escape not as a future dice-roll, but as an inherent capability they are deploying in order to achieve the suppression.
- “may have some resilience to public anger…”
- Verdict: Very strong. “Resilience” means they already possess the toughness. “A government […] may have some resilience to public anger if the news is to be effectively suppressed…” This implies their current resilience is a necessary asset in order to pull off the suppression. It fixes the timeline!
- “may have great escapability against public anger…”
- Verdict: Phenomenal style points, but standard English logic collapses. While “The Great Escape” is a legendary trope, “escapability” is rarely used for abstract political concepts (it’s usually reserved for American football quarterbacks dodging tackles). More importantly, if they already have escapability, they wouldn’t need to suppress the news in order to escape. The loop cancels itself out.
The Ultimate Minimalist “Real Winner” Hack for (b)
If you want to absolutely defeat the exam designers at their own game by changing only one word in (b) to make (c) perfectly logical, here is the ultimate cheat code:
Change “chance” to “intention” (or “hope”).
- “A government […] may have some intention of escaping public anger if the news of it is to be effectively suppressed…”
Why this wins:
“Intention” and “hope” are psychological states oriented toward a goal. If the government’s ultimate goal is to escape public anger, then everything fits the “is to be” rule perfectly: In order for the news to be effectively suppressed, they must first have the intention/hope of escaping public anger. The timeline is perfectly debounced.
Since you enjoy breaking down the architecture of these test items, would you like to look at question (22) or (24) from the rest of this text? There are some equally rigid “rules” being tested there (like why “remains as” in 24 is wrong) that are ripe for a creative workaround.
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#ExamNitpicker #東京大学入学試験問題
