Explanation

You need two similar words that fit in the meaning of the sentence. Creating an alike significant.

The protectionism is on the rise once again. B and C are the right choices.
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Where is the blank?

Thanks. Fixed (weird was not there )

Ask for further assistance if you do need.

Regards
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"back to the mercantilism" is straight clue for the "resurgent", but I find "recrudescent" bit abstruse word, by POE since none of rest resembles the meaning of the "resurgent" chose the "recrudescent".

Yeah recrudescent is a pretty esoteric word. I don't know how they picked that one out of the hat.
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Bump for further discussion
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Economic competition among nations may lead to new forms of economic protectionism that hearken back to the mercantilism of an earlier age: there are signs today that such protectionism is indeed _______ .

The sentence fragment before the colon suggests that new forms of economic protectionism may go back to or recall to our mind the mercantilism of an earlier age. The sentence fragment after the colon should uphold a similar idea or elaborate on it. Therefore we can complete it by stating that there are signs today that such protectionism is indeed coming back.

The words are resurgent and recrudescent.
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The sentence claims that economic cooperation can lead to protection and mercantilism, it then says that there are signs that such protectionism is _______. Since such protectionism doesn't exist currently, it means that the signs point to such protectionism becoming common again. So we choose resurgent and recrudescent.

I was not looking at the idea of the sentence but forming pairs first. 3 pairs were formed for six options. Pretty tricky question.

I am writing this https://greprepclub.com/forum/gre-text- ... tml#p67358 and this https://greprepclub.com/forum/gre-text- ... tml#p67409

More sequels on the way, please give kudos
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Carcass, in the guide, you have mentioned:

However, NOT always two words among the answer choices are synonyms, we might have also two words, which are the correct answers, that are closely related words in the list.

Another important caveat is that typically SE has not so many clues to find the right words as we do have in a TC sentence. Paraphrasing the sentence is not always a viable option or strategy.

Paraphrasing is not feasible in SE questions. I have an exhaustive list of contrast words that gregmat prepared. That is quite helpful.

In comparison, SE questions are shorter. We need to focus on the idea of the sentence at first right?

Kindly, help in improving SE questions as I screw these up. I bookmarked the SE question bank hope it helps!