Put back the missing word in the fixed expression
The exam itself was a walk in the park, but the interview afterwards was another matter.
Getting a straight answer out of the supplier was an uphill struggle.Each sentence ends with a set expression about how easy or how difficult something is. The verb in these expressions changes tense freely, but the noun inside them is locked: write the missing noun in the gap. If you put a perfect synonym there instead, the expression does not become slightly odd - it stops existing.
1. I was dreading the test, but it turned out to be a piece of ___.
2. The first week was chaotic, but after that it was plain ___.
3. Persuading him to change his mind was like pulling ___.
4. The second question in the exam was a hard ___ to crack.
5. Finishing all of this by Friday is a tall ___.Show the answers
1. cake
2. sailing
3. teeth
4. nut
5. orderItems 1 and 2 both say that something was easy while items 3, 4 and 5 say the opposite, yet you cannot borrow a noun from one and drop it into another: each expression is stored whole. Item 3 is a deliberately painful comparison, and it is the plural that is fixed - the singular there would sound like a trip to the dentist rather than a complaint. Item 4 describes a problem that resists you; the adjective in front has a little freedom, the noun has none. If you tried a perfect synonym anywhere in these five and it felt wrong before you could explain why, that instinct is precisely what this exercise is training.