The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

a. banked with dirt to a height of
b. banked with dirt as high as that of
c. banked them with dirt to a height of
d. was banked with dirt as high as
e. was banked with dirt as high as that of

I chose D because it seemed to best show parallelism (was conical...and was banked). However A is the right answer. Why is it A? Does it have anything to do with the 'a height of' and 'as high as' and how the two mean different things?

as a follow up, this is how I read the sentence when trying to solve it:

The single-family house constructed by the Yana, a Native American people who lived in what is now northern california, was conical in shape, its framework of poles overlaid with slabs of bark, either cedar or pine, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet.

I read it this way because I thought the portion "its framework..." is just filler for the sentence the test writers use to confuse the test takers. Is this the wrong approach?

wow, that's a bear of a problem. geez louise.

you are misreading the parallelism. you are correct that 'banked with dirt...' has to be parallel to something. unfortunately, though, the 'something' in question happens to be 'overlaid with slabs...'.

in other words, 'banked with dirt' applies to the framework of poles, not to the house itself.

but you have identified the other problem: there is a meaning shift. if you say 'dirt as high as four feet', you're implying that most of the dirt is well below the four-foot level, but that four feet is the maximum height. the correct answer choice, on the other hand, states that the height of the dirt bank is consistently three to four feet. remember, if the meaning of the original sentence is intellligible, you are not allowed to change it - a principle that decides the meaning in this case. (the meaning in choice d isn't absurd, but it conflicts with what you're told in the original sentence.)

a final problem with choice d is that the phrase 'as high as' should be followed by one value, not a range.
some of our players weigh as much as 300-325 pounds --> bad phrasing
some of our players weigh as much as 325 pounds --> good phrasing

Wow! Thanks a bunch Ron. That's one hell of an explanation.
I was wondering how we would figure whether 'banked with dirt' refers to 'house' or 'overlaid slabs'. But your explanation of the usage of 'as high as' answers that.

Yeah, good one! :)

Just to clarify, if the middle part was not there and it read something like "was conical in shape, and banked with dirt to a height of three to four feet", is "was" required a second time to maintain parallelism or can we assume that it is understood? i.e. do we need to say "was banked" assuming this was still meaning ful?

I was thinking of the "was conical" "was banked" as the two word verbs mentioned in the strategy guide, in which case second "was" is not necessary?

if you have that comma after "shape", then yes, you need the second "was".
if you don't have that comma, then the second "was" is optional (it would be parallel either way).