I'm struggling to understand why TRIFLING is the answer.
Here's how I'm struggling - if evidence is incomplete/missing, then why would these gaps be important?

Explanation

The sentence focuses on the relationship between the gaps in existing accounts of a life and the evidence used to produce those accounts. Since “gaps” implies a concern with completeness, the characterization of that evidence that makes the most sense for Blank (ii) is “incomplete.” The other choices, “credible” or “extant,” could explain the accuracy or verifiability of the accounts in question but nothing about the gaps themselves. Once it is determined that “incomplete” is the best choice for characterizing the evidence, it follows that the gaps in the accounts based on that evidence would likely be considerable, so the opposite of considerable, “trifling,” is the correct answer for Blank (i). Thus the correct answer is trifling (Choice A) and incomplete (Choice F).

Because trifling means meaningless, insignificant NOT important, trivial.

For this reason is the right one. You instead think that trifling means IMPORTANT. It is exactly the contrary.

Hope this helps

Regards

Thank you for your response but I don't know why I'm still confused lol.
The original sentence states that these gaps are "not trifling". So isn't NOT trifling = meaningful, important?

Your reflection is not without sense.

However, in the second part of the sentence, the right word is incomplete BUT we do have gaps in the first part of the same. As such, the gaps are NOT trivial i.e they are important.

The gaps in existing accounts of the playwright’s life are not trifling, which means they are important eventhough theay are incomplete.

I admit is convoluted and tough the sentence.

Hope this helps.

Ask if something does not convince you yet.

Regards

This sentence sounds like a very cruel double negative. Trifling means unimportant but the "not" in front of it negates its meaning so in the end the word we are looking for is the opposite of important. This is one of those sentences pseudo-intellectuals use to sound intelligent and polished as if making one's writing more obscure and opaque is synonymous to refined.

B and D

My only question is why is A and D not a good answer suggestion?

The definition of the word trifling is trivial or unimportant. Let's complete the first blank with one of the definitions of trifling.

The gaps in existing accounts of the playwright’s life are not UNIMPORTANT, since much of the documentary evidence on which historians have relied is (ii) ________.


The presence of a "not" in front of the unimportant creates a double negative (something that is NOT IMPORTANT would be unimportant and something that is NOT UNIMPORTANT would be important). This means that the first part of the sentence means that the gaps in the existing accounts are important. If the gaps are important then we need a word that justifies it in the second part. If the documentation were "credible" then nobody would be arguing there are gaps about the playwritghts' life. "Extant" may fit but it doesnt justify why there are gaps. "incomplete" works because incomplete historical documentation would lead to gaps in the understanding of a historical event.

I personally hate this question because English ia very direct language and that double negative is a little infuariating. People dont say "i am NOT doing unwell" when they want to say they are doing well.

"since much of the documentary evidence on which historians have relied is" means ? relied means rely on ? Is there any twist ?

The answer from OG is A and D. What am I missing?
I got the answer right according to above explanation but I got really confused when I saw the OG answer to be A and D.

trifling,incomplete

What is OG? According to the ETS official guide the real answer is A, and F.



Just think, "The data" as though is incomplete, So "The Gap" has no value.
_________________

I have the same issue I can't seem to understand trifling
_________________

Ok

Time to attack this nasty question in a brutal way.


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The gaps are something, basically, that we DO NOT know and we have to fill them. A gap could be in our knowledge and we need to learn something more to fill the gap.

After all , TC for the GRE are a fill gap questions.

The gaps in existing accounts of the playwright’s life

This means that in his life we ignore something, we do not know exactly what happened (for instance). Something is shady



are not (i) _________,

here, I do not know what is the first blank. Move one for now.


since

since is an important word here and it means because or for the reason that


much of the documentary evidence


the evidence we do have


on which historians have relied


and on which the historian have relied


is (ii) ________.

incomplete.


We do have incomplete information >>>>>> we do have gaps and these gaps are NOT

trifling OR meaningless.

I.E the gaps, which are shady, blurry - we do not have a complete understanding of those - ARE IMPORTANT

are not trifling = are important = they have a reason = they are RELEVANT


Under this perspective, the other answer choices are completely off-road


Regards

I am not an expert at all, so please ignore if you do not need anything from non-expert.

I selected A for (1) , but only thing I thought was I cannot say neither "The gaps" is "not obvious"= may be a little bit obscure nor "not implicit" = may be explicit some extent as there is no info in this question to back up those options, b and c. If we determine as b or c, we need more info about "The gaps" in this question.
In other words, b and c are quite opposite meaning, but nature that it will need more justifications to be selected is almost same to me.

Only thing we are given is The gaps are in existing accounts because of something in evidence, but not anymore.

I picked trifling just because I thought if gaps are there and they are caused by incompleteness of evidence, I though it may be somewhat worth for considering /may include some values.

For example, let's imagine that we need to propose new theory /accounts on this matter, and if there are 3 existing accounts A,B,C which cause the gaps, 3C2 , 3x2/2x1. = 3 patterns.
A-B (or B-A)
A-C (or C-A)
B-C (or C-B)

In researching, this might be good idea to investigate those gaps at first to create a new hypothesis , just for example, if A and B have same view for certain items even they are individually having gaps to C, we may want to make a a hypothesis that commonality in A and B is good place to create a hypothesis. (In this case there should be gaps between A and B in other items.)

I am new to this site, so please educate me if I have better way to reply.

But implicit means complete. So since 2nd blank is "incomplete" in first blank implicit can come right? they are not complete because the historians relied on work which were incomplete

Hi , thank you for asking. I am still learning.
I thought implicit = opposite of explicit = inexplicit, so not sure implicit has same meaning as complete has in any context.

The other angle which may be useful is if we see the logical structure of sentence, like below.

A are not a , since B is b.

A= The gaps in existing accounts of the playwrights' life
a = Blank i

B= much of the documentary evidence on which historians have relied
b = Blank ii

If we put opposite meaning in Bank i to Bank ii.
I think A and B needs to have same meaning/context/set-subset relations ships. I don't this this is the case.

B just a part of evidence, which may be used in A, but not same.

Another approach may be the context in this sentence, long story short, exiting accounts may be all wrong as evidence is incomplete.
So we should not ignore the gaps in each accounts as it may may mean important thing, for example no current exiting accounts are correct, and fact has not uncovered yet.

P.S.
I am neither an expert nor a native English speaker, so if you think differently I am happy to learn from you.

The gaps in existing accounts of the playwright’s life are not (i) obvious , since
much of the documentary evidence on which historians have relied is (ii) credible

why can it not be obvious and credible?