The missing score sheet
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During a fictional quiz tournament, one captain began to allege that a rival had removed the final score sheet, although nobody had yet checked the desk. The desk volunteer could avouch that she had placed the sheet in a blue folder, having done so herself. A credulous spectator accepted the captain's accusation immediately because it sounded confident. The organizer asked everyone to separate what they had directly observed from what they merely suspected or had heard from somebody else.
The captain could still allege interference, but repeating the accusation would not turn it into an established fact. The volunteer was willing to avouch the location of the folder, while carefully declining to claim knowledge of what happened afterward. The credulous spectator reconsidered his certainty when the organizer found the sheet beneath another document. The group corrected its account without treating every confident statement as false or every unproved claim as necessarily dishonest.
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Look away from the passage. Can you explain each focus word in your own words?
Original fictional passages for vocabulary practice.