Even though his army had never faced any defeat, the king Th

[madhukara77]

Hello Stacey -

Could you please help me out with this question -

Even though his army had never faced any defeat, the king Theodore carefully planned his every next battle; this practice explains why he never faced any defeat in the first place.

A) Even though his army had never faced any defeat
B) Even though his army never faced defeat --- OA
C) Despite his army having never faced defeat
D) Despite an army that had never been defeated
E) Despite his army never being defeated

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When you read the sentence , B is the correct answer. But i am not able to find a grammar rule to support it. Below is my logic - which is giving me option A , which I know is incorrect.

When to use past perfect tense -
Step 1 - Remove the past perfect tense from the sentence and replace with simple past.
Step 2 - Remove all the clarifying tense words (ex- after earlier etc.)
Step 3 - Now , if the sequence of events in the sentence is clear -we should not use past perfect. However , if the sequence is not clear now , we can use clarifying words or past perfect or both. If a past perfect is available - give preference to that.
-
Apply step 1 , 2 in the sentence -

"His army never faced any defeat , the king planned something". -- Obviously nothing is clear here -
so we need even thought to clarify the sequence. But as per step 3 , if past perfect is used , there is no harm. So why not A over B. ???

I have a similar sentence below . Which one is correct -
1> Even though the operation was successful , the patient was advised to be in hospital.
2> Even though the operation had been successful, the patient was advised to be in hospital.

Here as well, (1) seems to be the correct answer , but I do not have any rule here.

Kindly help -

[Sage Pearce-Higgins]

Please read the forum guidelines before posting. I can't answer your question until you post the source of this problem. If it's a GMATPrep problem, then it needs to be in the appropriate folder.