vishalwin wrote:In the minds of many people living in England, before Australia was Australia, it was the antipodes, the opposite pole to civilization, an obscure and unimaginable place that was considered the end of the world.

(A) before Australia was Australia, it was the antipodes
(B) before there was Australia, it was the antipodes
(C) it was the antipodes that was Australia
(D) Australia was what was the antipodes
(E) Australia was what had been known as the antipodes


This is one of the confusing SC question. Unable to apply any approach here.

Perfect. That makes it a great SC question as in some sense the GMAT is not really about approaches anyway. It's about having at questions in whatever way you can come up with until you get to the answers.

Let's just start going through the answer choices and see what we can do.

A looks ok. I get the original sentence and I don't see any obvious flaws in it. There might be flaws, but I don't see them yet. So I am going to keep A for now and see what clues I might get as I go through the other choices.

B does not make as much sense as A does. Before there was something it was something? If something does not exist, it does not make sense that it would be something. So it does not make sense that before there was Australia, it was the antipodes. In fact what does it even really refer to? Nothing that I can clearly see. So this answer choice is out.

Making progress.

The meaning of C is weird. I am not entirely sure how to describe why this is wrong. Anyway, from the original I got the sense that the meaning we are working with here is that Australia was considered the antipodes, and choice C conveys a meaning different from that and a bit nonsensical. The sentence created using C conveys that in people's minds before Australia was Australia the end of the world was Australia. So C is out.

The sentence created using D has another meaning issue. Lemme get this straight. Before Australia was Australia, Australia was what was something? That does not make sense and there is no way to get this straight. So D is out.

The sentence created using E conveys that in the minds of people, before Australia was Australia, Australia was what had been known as the antipodes. My take is that the point here is not that something was known as the antipodes. The point is that the place now called Australia was in the minds of people actually the antipodes. Maybe I am using fuzzy thinking here, but I believe it's working. Also, the sentence created using E conveys that Australia was what had been known as the antipodes, but actually my take is that Australia still is what had been the antipodes. So there's another issue, was versus is.

So just by going at it and seeing what you can do to evaluate and eliminate choices you can hack your way to the answer, which in this case is A.

[quote= My take is that the point here is not that something was known as the antipodes. The point is that the place now called Australia was in the minds of people actually the antipodes. Maybe I am using fuzzy thinking here, but I believe it's working. Also, the sentence created using E conveys that Australia was what had been known as the antipodes, but actually my take is that Australia still is what had been the antipodes. So there's another issue, was versus is.

So just by going at it and seeing what you can do to evaluate and eliminate choices you can hack your way to the answer, which in this case is A.[/quote]

Nice explanation there. That is my take too. These doubts do arise. You wonder - is this actually fuzzy thinking, or 'over-precise' thinking? Are we being more precise than the question-writer? Was this their intention too? I guess our best bet is to go with the kind of meaning we 'sensed in the original sentence even if the sentence was incorrect grammatically/rhetorically.