Question

Fill in the blank with the most appropriate word.
I was glad we _____ the candles when the lights went out.
A) Has had
B) Have been having
C) Were having
D) Had had

Answer 1

Hint: The options provided in the question are sets of auxiliary and main verbs. These structures of verbs indicate that the tense of the options is not simple. They are either perfect, continuous, or perfect continuous tense.

Complete answer:
In the sentence given in the question, we have the subject ‘we’, the object ‘candles’ but we do not have a verb for them. Therefore, the blank has to be filled with a verb.

Let us now check the options for the correct tense of verbs.
Option A) Has had – This option has a helping and a main verb. The helping verb is ‘has’ and is indicating the present perfect tense. All other verbs are in the past tense; hence the blank should also be filled with a word in the past tense. Therefore, this option is incorrect.
Option B) Have been having – This option has the helping verbs ‘have’ and ‘been’ which together indicate the present perfect continuous tense. We know that the sentence is in the past tense. Therefore, the blank can only be filled with a verb in the past tense. Thus, this option is incorrect.
Option C) Were having – In this option we have a helping verb ‘were’ and a main verb ‘having’. These together indicate the past continuous tense. This option can be used correctly for filling the blank as it would be consistent with the tense of the entire sentence. This option is correct.
Option D) Had had – This option has the helping and main verbs ‘had’ and ‘had’ and the option is hence in the past prefect tense. It indicates that the subject ‘had candles’ immediately when the lights went out. But the past perfect continuous tense would suggest that the subject had candles during the time period when the lights were out, and that would be more relevant. Therefore, this option is incorrect.

Thus, the correct answer is Option (C) i.e, I was glad we were having the candles when the lights went out.

Note: The grammatical structure for a sentence in the present perfect tense is SUBJECT + HAVE/HAS + MAIN VERB (PARTICIPLE FORM) For e.g. I have spoken to her. For past perfect tense, we use the same structure with the auxiliary verb ‘HAD’. For e.g. I had spoken to her. For the future perfect tense, we use the same structure as the present perfect, but we add an extra auxiliary verb ‘will’ before ‘HAVE’. For e.g. I will have spoken to her.