The following, by Jeff Brechlin, is the winning entry from a Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit “instructions” for something in the style of a famous person.

Here is Shakespeare’s Hokey Pokey.

For the benefit of our international students, the “Hokey Pokey” is a silly dance for children that goes something like this:

You put your [right leg] in,
You put your [right leg] out;
You put your [right leg] in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the hokey pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

A different part of the body is referenced in each verse (so, the song can go on for kind of a long time).

The Shakespearean version contains some antiquated words that wouldn’t appear on the GRE (“anon” means soon, quickly), but also some very excellent GRE words:

Lithe – bending readily; pliant; limber; supple; flexible: the lithe body of a ballerina.

Wanton – Done, shown, used, etc., maliciously or unjustifiably (a wanton attack; wanton cruelty); without regard for what is right, just, humane, etc.; careless; reckless; sexually lawless or unrestrained (wanton lust); extravagantly or excessively luxurious (Kanye West’s Tweets about how fur pillows are actually hard to sleep on might indicate a wanton lifestyle). Basically, wanton can mean lacking restraint in a number of ways.

Yoke – a device for joining together a pair of draft animals, especially oxen, usually consisting of a crosspiece with two bow-shaped pieces, each enclosing the head of an animal; a frame fitting the neck and shoulders of a person, for carrying a pair of buckets or the like, one at each end; an agency of oppression, subjection, servitude, etc.

Here’s a yoke pictured on Wikipedia:

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The following, by Jeff Brechlin, is the winning entry from a Washington Post Style Invitational contest that asked readers to submit “instructions” for something in the style of a famous person.

Here is Shakespeare’s Hokey Pokey.

For the benefit of our international students, the “Hokey Pokey” is a silly dance for children that goes something like this:

You put your [right leg] in,
You put your [right leg] out;
You put your [right leg] in,
And you shake it all about.
You do the hokey pokey,
And you turn yourself around.
That’s what it’s all about!

A different part of the body is referenced in each verse (so, the song can go on for kind of a long time).

The Shakespearean version contains some antiquated words that wouldn’t appear on the GRE (“anon” means soon, quickly), but also some very excellent GRE words:

Lithe – bending readily; pliant; limber; supple; flexible: the lithe body of a ballerina.

Wanton – Done, shown, used, etc., maliciously or unjustifiably (a wanton attack; wanton cruelty); without regard for what is right, just, humane, etc.; careless; reckless; sexually lawless or unrestrained (wanton lust); extravagantly or excessively luxurious (Kanye West’s Tweets about how fur pillows are actually hard to sleep on might indicate a wanton lifestyle). Basically, wanton can mean lacking restraint in a number of ways.

Yoke – a device for joining together a pair of draft animals, especially oxen, usually consisting of a crosspiece with two bow-shaped pieces, each enclosing the head of an animal; a frame fitting the neck and shoulders of a person, for carrying a pair of buckets or the like, one at each end; an agency of oppression, subjection, servitude, etc.

Here’s a yoke pictured on Wikipedia:

Read more

Thinking of taking one of our 9-session GRE classes? Here’s one benefit of our classes that we don’t mention anywhere else on our website, and that sometimes takes our students by surprise—when we give you a list of 49 words to learn every week (that’s 7 per day), we also follow up with a vocabulary email using those 7 words in context.

Here’s an example of the vocabulary emails our course students receive every day.

Dear Students,

Not long ago I was working as a private eye when a SLIGHT young man came in asking for my help. He was so emaciated, enervated, and lacking in VIGOR, in fact, that it looked as though he hadn’t eaten for a week, although he had just enough energy to twitch nervously.

I don’t mean to be PRESUMPTUOUS, he said in a peculiar accent, but this case is more important than anything you could possibly be moiling over and I just know you’ll be my detective.

Well, then, I said, a bit ruffled. Cut the drama — tell me EXPLICITLY what the case is about.

He began his story. He had been working as a busboy, clearing dishes from a table of pugnacious-looking women when one of the women shrieked and began grabbing at his apron. He scuttled back into the kitchen, only to find the women at his apartment door the next morning. He ran. He had been running ever since. It was a verisimilar tale.

Just then, a terrible FRACAS erupted on the street below my office. That was always happening back in my private eye days “ just as I’d sit down with the paper and a nice cigar, some petty criminal would run off with an old lady’s purse or a bunch of bananas and cause a din down below that scotched my equanimity. Anyway, this young man looked terrified. They’ve found me! he cried, attempting to hide in my coat closet.

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The exhibit is not so much a retrospective as a __________ ; the artist’s weaker early work is glossed over and any evidence of his ultimate dissolution is absent entirely.

Select two correct answers.

paean
philippic
tirade
panacea
eulogy
crescendo

(Note: When you see six answer choices and square checkboxes, that’s a clue that this is a GRE Sentence Equivalence problem, to which there will always be two correct answers.)

Make your selections before reading any further!

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Mnemonics or mnemonic devices are memory tricks to help us remember things like vocabulary words. However, many mnemonics are pretty cheesy — often involving the kind of jokes some people call “groaners.” For instance…

Tantamount means, “equivalent, as in value, force, effect, or signification.”

The word is often used to say that something is 99.9% as bad as something really bad, as in, “The dictator’s call to action is tantamount to a declaration of war.”

Here’s the mnemonic:

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When I make an error, I get excited. Seriously—you should be excited when you make errors, too. I know that I’m about to learn something and get better, and that’s definitely worth getting excited!

Errors can come in several different forms: careless errors, content errors, and technique errors. We’re going to discuss something critical today: how to learn from your errors so that you don’t continue to make the same mistakes over and over again. First, let’s define these different error types. Read more

While problems with charts and tables can look intimidating, it is often the case that the questions simply require you to be able to 1) read carefully, 2) do arithmetic, and 3) convert fractions to percents, and calculate percent change. That’s it.

Try this Data Interpretation problem set with five questions.

Ninth-Grade Students at Millbrook High School

1. What fraction of the girls are enrolled in Spanish?
2. What fraction of the students are boys who are enrolled in Spanish?
3. What is the ratio of 9^th grade girls not enrolled in Spanish to all 9^th grade students at Millbrook Middle School?
4. If x% more students are not enrolled in Spanish than are enrolled in Spanish, what is x?
5. If 2 of the boys not enrolled in Spanish decided to enroll in Spanish, and then 8 new girls and 7 new boys enrolled in the 9^th grade at Millbrook Middle School and also in Spanish, what percent of 9^th grade students at Millbrook would then be taking Spanish?

Record your answers on paper before continuing!

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Each week, we post a new Challenge Problem for you to attempt. If you submit the correct answer, you will be entered into that week’s drawing for two free Manhattan Prep GRE Strategy Guides.

In 2012, attendance at an annual sporting event was 5% greater than it was in 2011 and 20% greater than it was in 2010. What was the percent increase in attendance from 2010 to 2011?

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Here are two hilarious — but mathematically GRE-like — problems written by Manhattan GRE instructor Tommy Wallach.

As on the real GRE, both questions use the same set of two charts. The first question is multiple choice; the second requires you to enter your own answer. You may use a calculator.

1. If the five categories of irony were placed in the slice appropriate to them in the first chart, approximately what would be the internal angle of the slice labeled nostalgia, in degrees?

1. 7
2. 21
3. 25
4. 57
5. 70

2. If a hipster’s priorities were expressed as a percentage of 500 priority points, what would be the point difference between knowledge of craft beers and ironic attitude, rounded to the nearest tenth?

Give these problems a shot before reading further.

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Mnemonics or mnemonic devices are memory tricks to help us remember things like vocabulary words. However, many mnemonics are pretty cheesy — often involving the kind of jokes some people call “groaners.” For instance…

To abase is “to reduce or lower, as in rank, office, reputation, or estimation; humble; degrade.”

Here’s the mnemonic:

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