Even I selected A with the same thinking.

Others please share your thoughts.

wanted to bring this old thread up

Any takers?

ayushiiitm wrote:Want to know why A is wrong

and B is the OA

According to me, the modifier should be followed by what is modified. So I would have always gone with A

Please give a explanation

Because the sentence begins, "Of the people who..." we know that we're comparing more than one person, so we use "best known," not "better known." That allows us to narrow the options to A, B, and E. E is out because Martin Luther is known now, so the past tense in E is inappropriate. Choosing between A and B, the issue actually comes down to wordiness: choice A has "of them" unnecessarily tacked on at the end. If A had simply said "Martin Luther is the best known," it would be acceptable. The modifier can modify either "Martin Luther" or "the best known," since those are the same thing; therefore, the order in which those nouns are listed isn't important, and the wordiness issue is the dealbreaker.

Thanks Andrea

nice explanation

ayushiiitm wrote: According to me, the modifier should be followed by what is modified. So I would have always gone with A
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Hi ayushiiitm,

Thanks for posting this question, and Andrea, thanks for answering! Andrea provided a clear and concise explanation of how to reach the correct answer. That being said, there is a technical explanation to the question you asked in your original post, and while it's not something to worry about under test condition, I just wanted to chime in and provide that detailed solution so you know where Kaplan was coming from when we decided to test you on this.

"Best known" is a descriptive phrase. However, it functions as the subject (which must be a noun) of the sentence. That's due to a concept known as 'ellipsis,' or the omission of words that are grammatically necessary for a correct sentence but have already been stated or clearly implied by the rest of the text. In this case, the noun phrase "The best known" really means "The best known [person who brought about the reformation]." Of course, we would never actually type that whole mess out since we started the sentence with "Of all the people who brought about the reformation" and saying that twice would be a mouthful. Thus, "The best known" IS a person, and can correctly be modified by "Of all the people..." without introducing a modification error.

Good luck, and thanks again to Andrea!

Eli