Register: neutral-to-informal, common in both spoken retros and written postmortems
0 / 10 completed
1 / 10
A senior engineer says in a retro: "The vendor's API changed without notice again. Honestly, that's ___ with them at this point." Which phrase best signals something unpleasant but entirely expected, given past experience?
Par for the course is a fixed golf-derived idiom meaning "typical, to be expected, especially something mildly negative." It requires the definite article "the" and the preposition "for," not "of." "Par for a course" wrongly uses the indefinite article, "par of the course" uses the wrong preposition, and "the par for course" scrambles the article placement.
2 / 10
Which sentence uses "par for the course" correctly?
"The staging environment being out of sync with production is par for the course on this team" correctly labels a recurring, expected (often mildly negative) situation as normal for this context. It cannot introduce a bare future plan, an instruction, or a scheduled future event, since it needs an existing pattern to describe as typical.
3 / 10
Fill the blank: "The demo crashing five minutes before the client call is, unfortunately, ___ for this codebase."
Par for the course has a fixed word order: "par" + "for" + "the" + "course." The other options scramble this into invalid, meaningless sequences.
4 / 10
Which pair correctly distinguishes "par for the course" from "unprecedented"?
"Par for the course, the release slipped by a week" frames a delay as typical, matching a known pattern. "Unprecedented, the release shipped a week early" frames an outcome as breaking entirely from any known pattern. They point in opposite directions.
5 / 10
A postmortem reads: "Given how often this vendor's webhook silently drops events, this incident was ___ , not a surprise." Which best completes the sentence?
Par for the course is the correct, fixed form. The other options scramble the required word order into invalid phrases.
6 / 10
Which sentence contains an error in the use of "par for the course"?
"Par for the course that we discussed at the offsite, the server rebooted overnight" incorrectly attaches a relative clause and applies the phrase to a one-off event rather than something matching an established, recurring pattern. "Par for the course" needs a subject that fits a known, expected pattern. The other three sentences use it correctly.
7 / 10
Choose the sentence where "par for the course" is best replaced by "nothing out of the ordinary" without changing the meaning.
"Another Friday deploy causing a minor rollback is nothing out of the ordinary around here" preserves the meaning exactly. The other options misuse the phrase as an urgency marker, an unrelated possessive-sounding construction, or a pairing with a specific future date.
8 / 10
A design doc states: "Given the age of this legacy service, undocumented side effects in the billing module are, sadly, ___ ." Which best fits?
Par for the course is the correct, standard form — "par" stays singular and the definite article "the" is required. Option A wrongly uses "of." Option B wrongly pluralizes "par." Option D wrongly drops the article.
9 / 10
Which register note about "par for the course" is accurate?
"Par for the course" works equally well in a spoken retro ("Honestly, that's par for the course with this vendor") and a written postmortem. It always frames something, usually mildly negative, as typical rather than surprising, given past patterns.
10 / 10
Which sentence best demonstrates "par for the course" framing a recurring problem as unsurprising given established patterns?
"Given that this legacy job has failed silently every month-end for two years, last night's failure was par for the course, not a new bug" is the textbook use: a recurring problem framed as typical rather than surprising. The other options misuse the phrase as a command intensifier, insert it awkwardly mid-clause, or pair it incorrectly with a specific future date.