Question: Read the following paragraph carefully and answer the question that follows:
The Lannisters had ______ gold than the Tyrells until the Lannister army sacked Highgarden and took the Tyrell fortune to pay back the Iron Bank. On the other hand, the Northern army has
Fill in the blanks meaningfully, in the above paragraph, from the following options.
According to the rules of usage, “fewer” is used when discussing countable things, while “less” is used for singular mass nouns. For example, you can have fewer ingredients, dollars, people, or puppies, but less salt, money, honesty, or gold. Had the first blank been followed by “grams of gold”, “fewer” would have been an appropriate choice. Thus, [1] and [3] are to be retained. In the third blank, we have to choose between “sometime” and “some time”. “Sometime” means “at some point” or “former”. “Some time” means “a period of time”. From the sentence, it is clear that George R. Martin has not worked on the book for “some time”. Thus, [1] is the only option remaining with us. Similarly, in the fourth blank, “sometime” is the most appropriate.