Who told you it's B?

The given answer in this booklet is b.

I notice that in her words she used “had”, not “have”, does it mean anything relating to three?

Doubt your answer key is correct. There's no evidence to suggest that the phone was dropped twice before.

'Not again! ' typically suggests something happened once a short duration ago, and implies that the complain was made because it happened the 2nd time, which was unexpected by the person since the frequency of the incident occurring is lowm

Had or have doesn't matter here.

Feels like all the answers are incorrect.

There is also no indication to suggest that the it was the second time the phone was dropped, even though it would be the moment the phone was dropped AFTER the previous one.

I don't like the way this question is crafted/designed.

But from the info it can be inferred that the phone was dropped at least twice.
It could be that the owner dropped it twice not one hour ago, just that that information was omitted.

But in the context of the question, that information would have to be provided if the marker wanted the student to pick option b.


So if I had to pick the most probable answer in the context of the question , twice would be better than thrice

Thanks for J and Eric’s detailed comments. This is a question from a past year English competition so I guess it was designed to trick students?

BTW, I still don’t get it how we can infer that the phone has been dropped at least twice before the current moment?

No, J meant “dropped the phone at least twice”.

Which is actually the current drop and the “no, I dropped it a moment ago”.

Yes , it meant to include the drop that just happened.

If I had meant otherwise, I would have said b is correct instead of saying c should be correct.

I see. So all of us agree more on “twice” than “thrice”.

Yup I agree on twice more than thrice.

having dropped the phone not one hour ago, it means that the time duration between the most recent drop and the one before it was less than 1 hour.

Logically speaking, the events that occurred outside of this duration is unknown, save for the person complaining.


Any way to check with the setter or teacher?

Thanks J for the detailed comments! Don’t think I can find the setter though...

Welcome