Select the most appropriate option to fill in the blank.

"If he ____ sooner, he could have caught the train."

Question

Question

This question was previously asked in

AFCAT 02/2023 Memory Based Paper 27 Aug 2023

Answer 1

The correct answer is "Had arrived".

Key Points

The sentence is trying to express a condition in the past that didn't happen, which is why we use the third conditional sentence structure.
The third conditional sentence structure includes "if" followed by the past perfect tense, and then "would have" + past participle.
"Had arrived" is in the past perfect tense which is used to talk about something that didn't happen before another action in the past. In this case, him not arriving before the train left.
"Arrived" is the simple past tense which doesn't convey the conditional aspect needed.
"Would arrive" and "would have arrived" both refer to the future from the perspective of the past, and thus, aren't used here.
Hence, the correct answer is 'option 2'.