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Read the harsh (but fair!) judge's feedback from "The Great Global Bake-Off." The contestant's cake just collapsed under the weight of 45 layers of fondant.
Select ALL the grammatically correct statements that use complex past modals to describe what happened to the unfortunate cake.
The correct answers are: The cake needn't have been decorated with quite so much heavy edible glitter. To survive that much structural stress, the base would have had to be reinforced with steel. It could have been saved if you hadn't accidentally dropped it while presenting it to us.
These sentences correctly use complex passive modals in the past:
- Needn't have been + past participle means the action was done, but it was unnecessary.
- Would have had to be + past participle expresses a hypothetical past obligation in the passive voice.
- Could have been + past participle shows past passive possibility.
Why the others are wrong:
Passive forms require the past participle (decorated, not decorating). Furthermore, the infinitive marker to must be followed by the base form of the verb (be, not been).