aman88 wrote:Q. A small team of Croatian spelunkers recently discovered the world's deepest known hole, a 1693-foot pit that is over 200 feet as deep as the previous record-holder.

A. as deep as the
B. as deep as the supposed
C. as deep as any
D. deeper than any
E. deeper than the

Thanks.

Eliminate A,B, and C as we need comparative form here.

Since, there can only be one specific previous reord holder, eliminate D.

E seems to be the answer.

A small team of Croatian spelunkers recently discovered the world's deepest known hole, a 1693-foot pit that is over 200 feet deeper than the previous record-holder.

In Option D "any " doesn't make clear comparison.

" The " clearly refers the specific previous records

imo E

[spoiler]D and E sound grammatically correct however D doesn't make any sense.

E, imo[/spoiler][spoiler][/spoiler]

Since the given sentence used "deepest known hole", imlying that there are more than 2 holes in total.
While D says that "deeper than the ..." that means there are only 2 holes, therefore E may be the best choice here.

PS. The following explanation is given by Kaplan and I found it imperative to share it with all my GMAT mates. Do well all. Thanks.

"A vertical scan reveals the two choices "as deep as" and "deeper than". The phrase "as deep as" implies equality, while the phrase "deeper than" implies inequality. Here the sentence needs to express inequality, so we immediately eliminate (A), (B) and (C). Also (B) adds the word "supposed" which is illogical here. The record is not for the world's deepest hole - it's for the world's deepest known hole. Therefore we cannot qualify the previous record-holder by using the word "supposed". The previous record-holder was unquestionably the world's deepest known hole at the time. Choice (C) inserts the word "any" which is unnecessary and does nothing to improve the sentence.

The only difference between (D) and (E) is "any" versus "the". As stated above, the word "any" does not improve this sentence. While it is true that the new hole is over 200 feet deeper than any previous record-holder, this fact logically follows from the fact that the new hole is over 200 feet deeper than the previous record-holder, so the word "any" does not provide any further clarity, and in fact introduces a redundancy. Therefore we eliminate (D), leaving (E) as the correct answer choice."