 Which word best describes the author's feeling about the test?
The point of the second test was not to find the difference between cheap and expensive beers but instead to compare a variety of top-of-the-line beers. One aspect of the reward was that they would presumably enjoy the actual testing more--fewer rueful beer descriptions along the lines of "urine" or "get it away!" were expected than in the first round. The other aspect of anticipated reward was the panelists' unspoken but obvious assumption that this time they would "do better" on the test. Intellectual vanity being what it is, people who had fought for and won jobs at Microsoft and who still must fight every six months for primacy on the employee-ranking scale (which determines--gasp!--how many new stock options they receive) would assume that their skill as tasters was on trial, just as much as the beer was. Here is what happened and what it meant: 1. Procedure. This was similar in most ways to the experimental approach of Round 1. As before, each tester found before him on a table 10 red plastic cups, labeled A through J. The A-to-J labeling scheme was the same for all testers. Descriptions of and comments about each beer's taste--"smooth and nutty," "too strong," etc. If the first ranking was a measure of how good each beer was, this was an attempt to explain what made it good.
 amusing
 methodical  prestigious  formal  amusing