Choose the correct option to fill in the blank:
______ had the police reached than the thieves fled.

Question

Accepted Answer

The correct option is 2:

The correct option is 2:
The blank should be filled with "No sooner." This is because "No sooner... than" is a fixed correlative conjunction used in English grammar to indicate that one action immediately followed another. When "No sooner" begins a sentence, it requires inversion of the subject and the auxiliary verb in the first clause. The structure is typically: No sooner + had + Subject + Past Participle + than + Subject + Simple Past. In the sentence, "\_\_ had the police reached than the thieves fled," the structure perfectly matches the "No sooner... than" construction, where "than" acts as the second part of the pair, linking the two immediate sequential actions: the police arriving and the thieves fleeing.

The incorrect option is 1:
"As soon as" is a subordinate conjunction used to mean 'immediately after'. While it conveys similar timing, it does not use the inverted structure (had + subject) and requires "commas" or a different punctuation structure, not the conjunction "than" to connect the clauses. The correct form would be: "As soon as the police reached, the thieves fled."

The incorrect option is 3:
"Scarcely" is a similar negative adverb used to express immediate sequence, but its correlating conjunction is "when" or "before," not "than." The correct construction would be: "Scarcely had the police reached when/before the thieves fled." Using "Scarcely" with "than" is grammatically incorrect.

The incorrect option is 4:
"As well" is an adverbial phrase meaning 'also' or 'in addition'. It is used to add extra information and has no function in creating a time sequence between two past actions, especially when paired with the word "than." It is contextually and grammatically inappropriate for this sentence structure.