The first half of the sentence is just background, so it is from the second half that you must take your clues. It tells us that producing saffron is very costly, so you can anticipate that the number of blossoms required is a large rather than small number. Based on this, you can reject (C) unique and (B) meager for the first blank, leaving (A) vast.
The second blank implies a quality of the flower that makes it rare. The correct choice for the second blank is (F) delicacy. (D) color is irrelevant, and (E) hardiness is the opposite of your prediction.
The hint you are given is that cryptozoology lacks “scientific attestation”; that is, it has no scientific reason to be supported. So for the first blank, you are looking for a word that means “without.” (A) ignoring would mean an intentional rejection of scientific evidence, rather than an absence thereof. (C) needing would work, but there is no choice for blank (ii) that has to do with physical evidence. Furthermore, “relies upon” points us to a limitation of their evidence. Therefore, (B) lacking makes the most sense for the first blank.
With regard, again, to scientific attestation, you can infer that the second blank implies that the sightings are not backed by scientific data, so you are looking for a solution that means “unscientific” or “unreliable.” (E) imagined makes little sense, because it implies the sightings are not just inadequate but fictitious. (D) anecdotal provides us with the sense of unverifiable sightings and completes the first blank with “lacking” for the sense of being without. (F) nominal does not fit at all, as it means negligible, or in name only.
Because the first two blanks are so close to one another and are directly related, it is helpful to make a prediction for both of them together. Since the employees are being allowed to approach “more exciting projects,” it must be true that they are allowed to avoid the boring ones, so a prediction of “avoid” for blank (i) and “boring” for blank (ii) works well. (B) eschew and (D) quotidian are great synonyms for these predictions and are correct. (A) undertake and (F) arresting, meaning “exciting,” are the opposite of the meaning of this portion of the sentence. (C) supplement misses the mark as well; “in favor of” indicates replacement of one set of tasks for another, while supplement would imply simply adding the exciting tasks while still doing the boring ones. Finally, (E) latent means “hidden” or “undeveloped,” which does not fit the clues provided by the sentence.
The clues for blank (iii) span the entire sentence. The author is comparing companies that allow “flexibility” to companies that do not, so blank (iii) should mean something along the lines of “strict.” Of the answer choices, only (I) authoritarian is a match. (H) lax would describe the more flexible companies mentioned earlier, and there is no indication that the companies are being (G) disingenuous, or “insincere.”
The key word here is “extreme,” which indicates that you are looking for a word with very strong meaning for the first blank. Furthermore, you know that the building is “no longer safe to enter,” so the second blank must refer to some sense of structural decay. Thus, you can expect the full sentence to be something like “The neglect of the old theater was apparent in the extreme deterioration of the building.” For the first blank, (A) hinted at and (B) suggested can both be eliminated because they are too weak in meaning for “extreme.” Furthermore, both words mean the same thing, so neither could be the single correct answer for the first blank. (C) manifest makes the most sense.
Out of the options for the second blank, (D) and (E) are very similar-looking words, but only (D) dilapidation refers to buildings—(E) depilation refers to hair removal. Always study the words carefully! (F) radiance is the opposite of what you need.
While you expect the final clause, which is preceded by a semicolon, to be related thematically to the rest of the sentence, grammatically it stands on its own. You can therefore figure out the third blank first without needing the other two. The key here is the word “deluge”—you know this is a major rainstorm. Hence, for the third blank, you can reject both (H) soaked and (I) sprayed because both are much weaker words than (G) inundated.
For the second blank, the key clue is “sudden.” If it was sudden, then you can assume people were not expecting it—you can thus predict a word synonymous with “not expecting.” (D) waiting and (F) anxious would both imply people were expecting the downpour; thus, (E) unprepared is clearly the correct choice.
Finally, for the first blank, this word will be the reason that people were not expecting a sudden storm. (C) humid doesn’t work here, but between (A) arid and (B) calm, you may need to pause for a moment. (B) calm might work—it certainly contrasts with the eventfulness of the weather that followed—but (A) arid is a better answer because it implies that the weather was specifically very dry—the antithesis of the wetness of the storm. Plugging it all in, “The countless arid days left everyone unprepared for the sudden downpour; the deluge brought traffic to a halt as it inundated the roads.” You can see that everything agrees.
The necessary reference occurs at the end of paragraph 1: the sarcoglossan sea slugs are “[t]he only known animals that practice kleptoplasty.” The correct answer must match this idea by saying, in some way, that the sarcoglossan sea slugs obtain and get energy from chloroplasts, while other sea slugs do not. (C) is a match.
(A) may be tempting, but the passage does not state that other slugs are incapable of incorporating the PRK gene into their genome, nor is it ever stated that all of the kleptoplastic species can. (In fact, it can be inferred that many do not since the passage says that many kleptoplastic species quickly run out of the enzymes needed to maintain photosynthesis.) (B) is also very close, since the passage mentions that the kleptoplastic slugs do digest most of the algae rather than incorporating them, but they do not use this digestion as their primary food source; it is instead the incorporation of whole chloroplasts that is their primary source of energy from the algae. It is not stated that other sea slugs produce the PRK enzyme, so (D) can be eliminated. Similarly, while the passage mentions that the symbiosis that led to incorporation of mitochondria as being different from the partial symbiosis of algae, the passage does not state that kleptoplastic sea slugs lack mitochondria, ruling out (E).
The passage as a whole defines what kleptoplasty is and describes a surprising experimental result. Choice (E) summarizes both the definition and the result and is therefore correct.
(A) is a distortion of the author’s point. The mechanisms of kleptoplasty itself were well understood, even though the nature of its longevity in certain species were not. Both (B) and (C) are too specific. (B) focuses on paragraph 3 and includes information that the author never mentions; it is never stated that E. chlorotica cannot survive without incorporating the PRK gene. (C) focuses on a mere detail from paragraph 2.
Finally, choice (D) is not actually mentioned in the passage at all. It is not stated that horizontal gene transfer is unique to kleptoplastic species when compared to “other forms of symbiotic relationships,” nor is it stated that all kleptoplastic species use horizontal gene transfer.
E. chlorotica is mentioned in paragraph 3 as being an example of a kleptoplastic species that incorporates the PRK gene into its genome when exposed to another organism that has this gene. (A) is supported with information from paragraph 2; in the absence of algae, E. chlorotica lacks the PRK gene, which is responsible for producing the PRK enzyme that synthesizes ribulose-1,5-bisphosphate. (B) is likewise supported, since both kleptoplasty and horizontal gene transfer are described as being rare among animals. Regarding choice (C), the passage describes E. chlorotica as an example of a species that can incorporate the PRK gene. Indeed, the scientists were surprised to find that gene transfer was the cause of the longevity of the chloroplasts used by E. chlorotica, but to say that it is the only such species is extreme; it is mentioned in paragraph 2 that other species can maintain the reaction for prolonged periods of time, so it is plausible that they use the same mechanism.