Digital SAT Passage Practice - Set 24

A master stone mason's disdain for power tools, a bell foundry master's pompous farewell speech, and a stained glass workshop's cleaning test each hide one of the ten words from SAT Vocab Ep.24. Eighteen Digital SAT-format questions walk through every Reading and Writing skill, from word meaning to cross-text evidence.

CRAMBOOKNOTES Digital SAT Practice

Digital SAT Passage Practice

Set 24 Full Domain Practice From Ep.24 Words

High School Grades 10-12 18 Questions Digital SAT Format

◀ Review Vocab Ep.24 First All Digital SAT Practice

The Digital SAT Reading and Writing section is built from short passages, usually 25 to 150 words, with one question attached to each. Two of the four content domains, Craft and Structure and Information and Ideas, make up more than half the test and cover several distinct skills, not just vocabulary. This set covers every skill inside both domains, from Words in Context and Text Structure to Cross-Text Connections, Central Ideas, Command of Evidence, and Inferences, using the same ten words from SAT Vocab Ep.24 so the vocabulary stays familiar while the question types rotate through the full range you will actually see on test day.

Set 24 pulls its passages from a mix of craft-focused and everyday scenarios: a tea ceremony critique, a stone mason's disdain for power tools, an erratic rowing stroke rate, an upholsterer's tactless client, and a bell master's grand farewell speech, along with a handful of settings involving an orchid collector, a community radio dispute, an ice sculpture competition, an origami exhibit, and a stained glass restoration workshop. None of these scenarios repeat a real-world case; they were written specifically to give each of the ten Ep.24 words a natural, test-realistic sentence to live in.

Nearly every Ep.24 word carries a negative charge: bland, circuitous, disdain, erratic, foment, gauche, pompous, and scoff all describe some form of dullness, indirection, contempt, or arrogance. Amass and terse stay closer to neutral, describing accumulation and brevity without being inherently good or bad. When almost every word in a set leans the same direction, charge alone will not help you narrow the choices, so pay closer attention to the precise shade of meaning each word carries instead.

Read each passage once, answer, and check the explanation regardless of whether you got it right. The explanations point to the exact phrase in the passage that the correct answer depends on, which is the habit that separates strong readers from students who are guessing.

Words in Context - Definitions

These five questions test whether you can identify a word's precise meaning using only the sentence around it. The scenarios range from a tea ceremony critique to a bell master's farewell speech.

Question 1 of 18 Craft and Structure

The tea ceremony instructor gently critiqued the student's first attempt as bland, lacking the subtle attention to temperature and timing that gives the ritual its depth.

As used in the text, "bland" most nearly means

Question 2 of 18 Craft and Structure

The master stone mason viewed the apprentice's use of power tools with open disdain, insisting that hand chiseling alone could achieve the precision the cathedral restoration required.

As used in the text, "disdain" most nearly means

Question 3 of 18 Craft and Structure

The rowing coach grew concerned about the crew's erratic stroke rate during the final leg, speeding up and slowing down unpredictably in a way that threw off the boat's balance.

As used in the text, "erratic" most nearly means

Question 4 of 18 Craft and Structure

The upholsterer thought it gauche when the client insisted on displaying the antique chair's price tag alongside it at the gallery opening, as if the value mattered more than the craftsmanship.

As used in the text, "gauche" most nearly means

Question 5 of 18 Craft and Structure

Younger foundry workers found the retiring bell master's farewell speech a bit pompous, filled with grand claims about his own irreplaceable genius rather than gratitude toward the team.

As used in the text, "pompous" most nearly means

Words in Context - Complete the Text

Instead of a highlighted word, these three questions leave a blank and ask you to choose the word that fits the sentence's logic, using amass, foment, and scoff.

Question 6 of 18 Craft and Structure

Over four decades, the retired botanist managed to ______ one of the largest private orchid collections in the country, acquiring rare specimens from collectors around the world.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?

Question 7 of 18 Craft and Structure

Management accused the late-night DJ of using his show to ______ unrest among staff, though he insisted he was simply reporting employee complaints that management had ignored for months.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?

Question 8 of 18 Craft and Structure

Veteran ice sculptors tend to ______ at competitors who rely entirely on power tools, arguing that hand carving remains the only way to achieve truly fine detail.

Which choice completes the text with the most logical and precise word?

Text Structure and Purpose

These two questions step back from single words and ask how a passage is organized, or what a specific sentence is doing within it, using an origami exhibit and a stained glass cleaning test.

Question 9 of 18 Craft and Structure

An origami exhibit's opening placard credits a single master folder with inventing the wet-folding technique now used throughout the art form. A small addendum near the exit notes that historical records actually show at least three folders in different countries developing similar techniques independently around the same decade.

Which choice best describes the function of the addendum in the text as a whole?

Question 10 of 18 Craft and Structure

A stained glass workshop tested two cleaning solutions on matching panels from the same damaged window, one a traditional vinegar mixture and the other a modern enzymatic cleaner. Conservators rated the enzymatic cleaner only slightly more effective at removing grime, not enough to be conclusive. In color preservation, however, the vinegar mixture left the original pigments noticeably less faded.

Which choice best describes the overall structure of the text?

Cross-Text Connections

These two questions present two short, related passages and ask how one would likely respond to a claim made in the other, using a rowing equipment claim and a bell foundry's marketing materials.

Question 11 of 18 Craft and Structure

Text 1

A rowing equipment manufacturer credits a redesigned oar blade for a recent wave of faster race times among club-level crews.

Text 2

Training hours per week for the same clubs' crews also rose by nearly twenty percent across those two seasons, additional practice time crews used to refine technique regardless of equipment.

Based on the texts, how would the author of Text 2 most likely respond to the manufacturer's claim in Text 1?

Question 12 of 18 Craft and Structure

Text 1

A bell foundry's marketing materials attribute the clearer tone of its newest bells to a proprietary bronze alloy developed in-house.

Text 2

Metallurgical records show the foundry also upgraded its cooling process during casting around the same time, a change known to affect tone independently of alloy composition.

Which choice best describes the relationship between the two texts?

Central Ideas and Details

These two questions reuse circuitous and terse from Vocab Ep.24, this time asking what the passage means as a whole rather than what one word means.

Question 13 of 18 Information and Ideas

The stone mason's directions to the cathedral's hidden scaffolding entrance were so circuitous, winding through three unmarked alleys and a courtyard, that new apprentices often arrived twenty minutes late on their first day.

Which choice best describes the main idea of the text?

Question 14 of 18 Information and Ideas

When asked for an estimate on restoring the antique sofa, the upholsterer's reply was uncharacteristically terse: just a price and a delivery date, with none of his usual detailed explanation of the process.

Based on the text, which choice best describes the upholsterer's reply?

Command of Evidence

These two questions give you a claim and ask which piece of evidence would most directly support it, a skill that shows up constantly in the Information and Ideas domain.

Question 15 of 18 Information and Ideas

An orchid society member believes a specific humidity range, rather than fertilizer type, is the main factor behind consistent blooming in rare orchid varieties.

Which finding, if true, would most directly support the member's belief?

Question 16 of 18 Information and Ideas

A community radio station manager argues that adding a call-in segment has increased listener loyalty rather than simply changing the show's format.

Which piece of evidence would most directly support the manager's argument?

Inferences

These two questions close the set with an unfinished passage and ask you to complete the logical conclusion the evidence supports, without overreaching beyond what the passage actually shows.

Question 17 of 18 Information and Ideas

A stone mason restoring a centuries-old wall noticed that sections repaired with a traditional lime mortar decades ago showed far less cracking than sections repaired more recently with modern cement-based mortar, even though the modern repairs used a stronger-rated material. A preservation team planning further repairs might reasonably infer from this that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

Question 18 of 18 Information and Ideas

A bell foundry has introduced several new alloy blends over the past decade to try to improve tone quality, yet independent tone-quality ratings show its original, decades-old alloy still outperforms every new blend the foundry has tried. What this suggests is that ______.

Which choice most logically completes the text?

out of 18 correct

Question Distribution by Skill

How This Set Is Built

Set 24 covers every skill inside Craft and Structure and Information and Ideas, the two domains that together make up more than half of the Reading and Writing section. It draws on Ep.24's cluster of words describing dullness and social missteps, disdain and pompous lean sharply negative while amass and terse stay closer to neutral, testing how well you track a passage's precise meaning even when charge alone will not narrow the choices. The two Central Ideas questions close the vocabulary loop by reusing circuitous and terse, this time asking what the passage means rather than what the word means.

Every passage in this set was written specifically for these ten words. None are adapted from outside sources, and none repeat across other sets in this series.

Skill	Domain	Questions
Words in Context - Definitions	Craft and Structure	5
Words in Context - Complete the Text	Craft and Structure	3
Text Structure and Purpose	Craft and Structure	2
Cross-Text Connections	Craft and Structure	2
Central Ideas and Details	Information and Ideas	2
Command of Evidence	Information and Ideas	2
Inferences	Information and Ideas	2

Where Students Lose Points on This Set

Words in Context questions are usually missed for one of two reasons: either the reader focuses only on the highlighted word and ignores the surrounding clause that explains it, or they pick an answer that matches their own memorized definition instead of the meaning the sentence actually supports. In this set, words like gauche and pompous work the same way: the correct choice always traces back to a specific phrase in the passage, never to outside knowledge of the word.

Cross-Text Connections trips up students who assume the second text will always agree with the first. In both Question 11 and Question 12 here, Text 2 complicates or questions an assumption in Text 1 rather than confirming it, which is the more common relationship on the actual exam than most students expect.

Command of Evidence questions are missed most often when a student picks the answer that sounds true in general rather than the one that tests the specific claim being made. Question 15's correct answer is the only choice that measures the exact outcome, blooming consistency, that the society member's belief depends on. The other three choices are all plausible facts that simply do not address that claim.

Reviewed by the CramBookNotes SAT prep team as part of the Digital SAT Passage Practice series.

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