Complete the frustrated traveler's diary entry.

The passengers _____ stranded at the airport for over twelve hours finally received a half-hearted apology and a single stale donut.

The correct answer is left.

This is a passive reduced relative clause. The full clause would be "who were left stranded." To reduce it, we remove the relative pronoun ("who") and the "be" verb ("were"), leaving only the past participle left.

"Leaving" would incorrectly imply the passengers were doing the action of leaving someone else. "Were left" creates a grammar error because the sentence already has a main verb ("received").