Today’s SAT question of the day is a sentence completion that requires precise reading (yes, moreso than usual).  There seems to be a certain store manager who felt…something…when sales dropped, so she did…something…to a department for its lack of effort.
The tricky part of this question isn’t making predictions – it’s not much of a stretch to understand that the sales manager was displeased and took it out on the underperforming department.
The tricky part is matching those to the remarkably similar-looking answer choices:(A) indolent . . intimidated
(B) indignant . . upbraided
(C) insolent . . exonerated
(D) indulgent . . castigated
(E) intolerant . . condonedAll of the words for the first blank start with “in-“, so they’re all not…something…but which one means “not pleased”?  D and E are probably familiar enough that you know they’re not a good fit for the first blank; I’ll leave the others in the running for now.Moving on to the second blank, which word means that she punished the department? A doesn’t fit, so I’ll assume we are left with B and C…and then I’ll tell you that to exonerate someone is to declare them not guilty.So, it’s B.  If any of the answer choices for the first blank are unfamiliar, they’d be good to add to your vocabulary rotation – and don’t forget about condoned, one of your top 100 words!