Today’s SAT question of the day is a sentence completion about the loss of a class president election. The candidate was in extremely low spirits after his loss – and the colon tells us that this is a definition sentence, so that clue can become our prediction.

Since the question was so straightforward, the answer choices are more obtuse. We need to focus on finding a word that means “really sad” and “unable to be cheered up.”

Considering word roots, we could eliminate C and E because they don’t start with negative prefixes. A should likewise be eliminated, though it may at first seem that “un” is the prefix; unctuous is not a negative word (and, if you know the definition, you will see that it has nothing to do with our question).

This leaves us with disconsolate and inscrutable.

Dis = not and console = to make someone feel better. That seems like a good choice.

In = not and scrutable sounds like scrutinize, so it looks like it means “not able to be examined.” That doesn’t work for our sentence.

There you go! Disconsolate. Even if you didn’t know the words, you could break them down by roots and find the right answer!