Today’s SAT question of the day is a sentence completion question about a film that polarized an audience. To polarize something is to drive it to opposing ends of the spectrum (like the north and south poles!), so this audience has been split down the middle regarding this film.

Here are our two poles: While many ——- the film for its artfully directed scenes, others ——- it for being inaccessible.

It sounds like the viewers praised the film for its artful moments – it doesn’t make sense to criticize something for being artful.  It does, however, seem reasonable to criticize something for being inaccessible. We need a word for the first blank that means something like praised, and one for the second that means something like criticized.

The second blank leads us straight to the best answer: E. Even if you didn’t know the meanings of extolled, endorsed, and commended, “praised”, “regarded”,  and “admired” aren’t good fits in the first blank; choices A, D, and C are out.  (B is an obvious loser – blame doesn’t work with our prediction at all.  Better luck next time, B!)

PS – those bold words are very good to know!