SE with double negatives

[hasibul212003]

Help with the following sentence equivalence question?
The majority of government employees disagree with a plan to debunk the low budget grassroots effort to expose the frivolity of Project X; accordingly, the government employees’ union, with a newly elected leadership that more closely reflects the opinions of its members, has decided to __________ Project X.
champion
venerate
censure
bolster
incite
gainsay
And can you also deal with sentences involving 2 negatives? Is there a general strategy?

[swasti.srivastva]

Answer should be
gainsay and censure.

Since Project X is frivolous ->neg
to expose this , a low budget grassroot efforts are made ->positive
theres a plan to debunk these efforts->negtive
the govt members are against this negative plan-> positive.
So basically govt members support the effort to expose the frivolous Project X.
Hence the suitable words should be censure (express sever disapproval) and gainsay (contradict) for Project X.

[tommywallach]

Great explanation from Swasti.

There's no way to "deal" with double negatives in questions any more than there's a way to deal with double negatives in life. If someone comes up to you and says, "I'm not spending any more time with people who aren't nice," you can generally work out what they mean. This is no different, just with more words to attempt to obfuscate the basic logic. With this question, making sure you understand the sentence up to the semicolon is KEY to getting the right answer. Translate it into smaller words for yourself, and make sure you get it.

-t