I’m not convinced by the answer. Could someone help me?

[Burnice]

I ran into an unknown in the Lexico-grammar exercise, but I didn’t try and ____ the gap.
A. Held over
B. Hung out
C. Pressed on
D. Stuck at

The answer given was C. Was it true? Could someone explain why or why not? Thank you in advance.

 

[Piscean]

I ran into an unknown in the Lexico-grammar exercise

Which exercise was this? Can you give us a link to it?

 

[Burnice]

It’s a Lexico-grammar question in a mock paper that someone snapped and posted in my Facebook group. I searched for this question on Google but all the sources were in Vietnamese, and they didn’t share the same answer - some said it was C while some said D, along with the Vietnamese definition for each choice, but I thought that either of them fitted the blank.

 

[emsr2d2]

I suggest you forget you ever saw this. It's nonsense. For a start, "I ran into an unknown" makes no sense at all. Consequently, the main sentence makes no sense. Finally, but most importantly, none of those choices work in the gap. The only phrasal verb that fits is "fill in". If you have any contact with the person that posted it in your Facebook group, please tell them it's a terrible question and no answer is correct.

 

[Burnice]

I suggest you forget you ever saw this. It's nonsense. For a start, "I ran into an unknown" makes no sense at all. Consequently, the main sentence makes no sense. Finally, but most importantly, none of those choices work in the gap. The only phrasal verb that fits is "fill in". If you have any contact with the person who posted it in your Facebook group, please tell them it's a terrible question and no answer is correct.

I suggest you forget you ever saw this. It's nonsense. For a start, "I ran into an unknown" makes no sense at all. Consequently, the main sentence makes no sense. Finally, but most importantly, none of those choices work in the gap. The only phrasal verb that fits is "fill in". If you have any contact with the person who posted it in your Facebook group, please tell them it's a terrible question and no answer is correct.

I have just discussed this question with my teacher. She said the context was: the speaker saw a question he didn’t know how to answer, so he just left it there and tried hard to answer other questions instead, which was "press on". What do you think about this?

 

[emsr2d2]

The phrasal verb "to press on", meaning "to continue" works fine in the context you described but it absolutely does not fit in the gap in the sentence in post #1. To be clear, the four sentences that would result from the options given are:

I ran into an unknown in the Lexico-grammar exercise, but I didn’t try and held over the gap.
I ran into an unknown in the Lexico-grammar exercise, but I didn’t try and hung out the gap.
I ran into an unknown in the Lexico-grammar exercise, but I didn’t try and pressed on the gap.
I ran into an unknown in the Lexico-grammar exercise, but I didn’t try and stuck at the gap.

All four make no sense.