Advanced Listening Practice

1. How did Edward first acquire the Harrowfield map?
    He bought it from an anonymous online seller in Oregon
    He found it behind a false panel in a cabinet he built
    It arrived as an unsolicited gift from a woman who'd attended the school
    He bought it at an estate sale from a NY state surveyor's descendant

2. What led the appraisers to authenticate the map?
    Hidden coded watermarks used only by the NY State Survey Office
    A handwriting match to letters in the national cartographic archives
    The materials and printing matched what was possible in 1893 New York
    The same map had previously sold at a prestigious London auction

3. Why was Edward shocked by the Tucson woman's description of the school?
    She recalled a margin annotation he had deliberately left off the listing
    She described a modern brutalist building that contradicted the map's era
    She accused him of stealing the map from her family's archives
    She described a building still standing across from his shop

4. What discrepancy convinced Edward the residents weren't coordinating a hoax?
    They disagreed on the year a fire destroyed the church
    One recalled a rooster on a candy wrapper; another, a pheasant
    They gave different coordinates, placing the town in different states
    Each claimed to have drawn the original map before selling it

5. Why did Dorothy conclude no town had ever stood there?
    Indigenous people had protected the area from settlement
    The state had made it a wildlife sanctuary before 1893
    Jagged rock formations made the land impossible to build on
    They didn't come across any of the usual traces of a former settlement

6. What feature matched the Tucson woman's letter exactly?
    A notch in the eastern ridge where the afternoon sun would hit the town
    A dried riverbed cutting through the centre of the forest
    A perfectly circular clearing where the church foundation should be
    A cliff face blocking any road access from the highway

7. Why did Edward take the map off his website?
    A legal threat from the surveyor's descendants demanding its return
    An attacker tried to steal the document from his shop
    Selling it felt like closing a mystery he hadn't finished exploring
    He found chemical proof it was a modern forgery

8. What fear does Edward voice about the hemlock tree at the end?
    That returning would trigger severe auditory hallucinations
    That if he returns, the hollow where the soldier lay will be gone
    That returning would prove the whole expedition was a dream
    That returning would leave him with nothing but an empty pocket