Single correct option
The passage below is followed by a sentence that has been removed from it. From the given options, choose the one where the missing sentence best fits back into the passage.
[1] Competitive chess clocks, which give each player a fixed total time for the whole game rather than a fixed time per move, were introduced in the late nineteenth century to stop players from thinking indefinitely over a single position. [2] The change had an unintended side effect that tournament organisers had not anticipated. [3] Players began deliberately spending large amounts of time early in a game on well-known, already-analysed opening positions, banking almost no advantage from the thought, purely to project confidence or unsettle an opponent unfamiliar with the format. [4] Modern tournament formats have introduced small time increments added after every move specifically to discourage this kind of purely psychological time expenditure.
Missing sentence: Rather than simply preventing delay, the fixed clock created a strategic resource — time itself — that could be spent for reasons having nothing to do with calculating the position on the board.
[1] Competitive chess clocks, which give each player a fixed total time for the whole game rather than a fixed time per move, were introduced in the late nineteenth century to stop players from thinking indefinitely over a single position. [2] The change had an unintended side effect that tournament organisers had not anticipated. [3] Players began deliberately spending large amounts of time early in a game on well-known, already-analysed opening positions, banking almost no advantage from the thought, purely to project confidence or unsettle an opponent unfamiliar with the format. [4] Modern tournament formats have introduced small time increments added after every move specifically to discourage this kind of purely psychological time expenditure.
Missing sentence: Rather than simply preventing delay, the fixed clock created a strategic resource — time itself — that could be spent for reasons having nothing to do with calculating the position on the board.
- A. After [1]
- B. After [2]
- C. After [3]
- D. After [4]
Show answer and solution
Answer: (B) After [2]
The missing sentence explains the general nature of the 'unintended side effect' flagged in [2] before the passage moves to the concrete example of spending time on known openings in [3]. It generalises the claim in [2] ('time itself... could be spent for reasons having nothing to do with calculating the position') and is then illustrated by [3]'s specific example, so it fits best between [2] and [3], i.e., after [2].
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