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“Mendacious” means lying or untruthful. The sentence’s consequence—“reopened the inquiry”—signals that the statement wasn’t merely unclear; it was false in a way that affected decisions. “Deceptive” (B) captures intentional untruth or misleading content. “Candid” (A) is the opposite, denoting frank honesty. “Curious” (C) implies oddness, not falsity. “Gracious” (D) relates to courtesy, irrelevant to truth value. Nelson–Denny items often hinge on causal connectors: if mendacity prompts renewed investigation, the term must encode falsehood serious enough to undermine trust. Distinguish “mendacious” from near-neighbors like “specious” (plausible but false reasoning) and “erroneous” (incorrect without implying intent). In argumentative passages, spotting such evaluative labels is essential for tracking credibility: mendacious sources should be weighed differently than merely mistaken ones. Substituting “deceptive” preserves both meaning and tone, verifying the answer quickly and guarding against distractors that merely shift register without matching denotation.