Cambridge C1 Phrasal Verbs for Use of English

One particle can reverse the logic of a Cambridge C1 answer.

The council tested three weekend bus routes. Two attracted too few passengers, but the airport route ______ out better than expected and will continue.

A. boiled B. stemmed C. panned D. worked

Both panned out and worked out can describe a satisfactory result, so this item is under-specified as written. That is exactly the trap to avoid when practising Reading and Use of English Part 1: a fair answer depends on decisive grammar, collocation, register, or meaning—not on which phrasal verb happens to be in a study list.

Cambridge currently describes C1 Part 1 as a text with numbered gaps and four options for each gap. It explicitly names phrasal verbs alongside idioms, collocations, shades of meaning, and fixed phrases. The task has eight questions. It does not ask you to recite an official phrasal-verb list.

This guide focuses on five useful expressions whose boundaries create defensible Part 1 choices: boil down to, stem from, pan out, work out, and play out. Use the Cambridge C1/C2 vocabulary hub for the full learning path and Exam English for all six exam verticals.

Five verbs, five different decisions

The table is a compact practice set, not an exhaustive Cambridge list. Learn each expression with its subject, object, particle, and register.

1. Boil down to: name the core

Boil down to compresses a complicated matter into its essential issue or deciding factor:

After several rounds of debate, the decision boiled down to whether the town could fund maintenance.

The to is a preposition. It can be followed by a noun phrase, an -ing form, or a noun clause:

• It boils down to trust.
• It boils down to choosing the safer route.
• It boils down to whether the evidence is reliable.

Do not write boils down to choose or boils down that the evidence is reliable. A full that-clause needs a frame such as the fact that.

There is also a transitive pattern: The editor boiled the argument down to two points. A pronoun goes between verb and particle: boiled it down, not boiled down it.

The meaning is not simply “reduce a quantity.” You can cut the budget by ten percent, but you do not normally boil the budget down by ten percent. Nor does the phrase automatically identify a cause. The disagreement boils down to trust states the essence of the disagreement; the disagreement stems from mistrust identifies its origin.

2. Stem from: keep cause and result in order

Stem from means originate in or be caused by something:

Much of the confusion stemmed from an ambiguous instruction.

The result comes before the phrase; the source follows from:

confusion → stems from → an ambiguous instruction

Reversing those nouns reverses the causal claim. The instruction stemmed from confusion means the confusion produced the instruction.

Use stem from when context licenses an origin. It can introduce one contributing factor without claiming that factor is the sole cause: The variation may stem partly from differences in sampling. It is neutral and works in formal prose.

Compare it with boil down to:

• The dispute stems from conflicting interpretations of the rule. The interpretations caused the dispute.
• The dispute boils down to who has authority to interpret the rule. This is the essential question after other detail is removed.

These statements could both be true. A good cloze supplies language such as originated, caused, at heart, or ultimately depended on to make the intended relation clear.

3. Pan out: judge success, not sequence

Pan out is normally intransitive. It asks whether a plan, prediction, investment, or hoped-for situation ultimately proves successful or satisfactory:

The expansion looked promising, but it did not pan out.

Natural frames include pan out well, pan out as expected, and if everything pans out. It is conversational to neutral, so a formal report may prefer proved successful or produced the expected result.

Do not give it a direct object: the team panned out the plan is wrong for this meaning. Do not use it merely to describe a sequence of events. That is the territory of play out:

• We do not know how the negotiation will play out asks how events will unfold.
• We hope the negotiation pans out focuses on whether the result is favorable.

The boundary is a tendency, not a mathematical rule. Context must foreground process or success strongly enough to decide.

4. Work out: inspect the object

Work out has several productive meanings, which makes its grammar especially useful in a cloze.

It can mean solve or calculate:

Researchers worked out the average cost per visit.

It can mean devise or negotiate:

The two sides worked out a temporary arrangement.

It can also describe an outcome:

Fortunately, the revised timetable worked out well.

In the first two patterns, the verb is transitive and separable. A noun can appear after the particle or between verb and particle: work out the cost / work the cost out. A pronoun must go in the middle: work it out, not work out it. In the outcome pattern, there is no direct object.

This distinguishes it from pan out. The team worked out a plan means they devised it. The plan panned out means it ultimately succeeded. The plan worked out can also report a satisfactory result, so a bare outcome sentence may allow both. Fair practice needs an object or another decisive clue.

5. Play out: follow the development

In its intransitive core sense, play out describes how a situation develops over time:

It remains unclear how the dispute will play out.

It does not mean implement a real plan. The company will play out the launch plan next month is not a natural substitute for carry out or implement.

The transitive pattern has a different but related use: deliberately explore a hypothetical scenario before deciding.

Let us play out the worst-case scenario before choosing a supplier.

This pattern is separable: play the scenario out is possible, and a pronoun must be placed in the middle: play it out.

Compare all three outcome verbs:

• play out: How will the events develop?
• pan out: Will the hoped-for result succeed?
• work out: Can we solve or arrange it, or did the result prove satisfactory?

A worked Part 1-style cloze

The following original passage is practice material, not a Cambridge sample.

A library tests later opening hours

A regional library extended its opening hours for a three-month trial. The change (1) ______ from repeated requests from commuters who arrived after the normal closing time. Managers had to (2) ______ out staffing arrangements with the security contractor before the trial began.

At first, nobody knew how demand would (3) ______ out across the week. Friday visits increased sharply, whereas Monday visits remained low. The whole question eventually (4) ______ down to whether the extra Friday use justified the cost of five late openings. The broad plan did not (5) ______ out as originally designed, but a one-night version did.

1. A boiled B stemmed C played D panned
2. A stem B pan C work D boil
3. A play B boil C stem D make
4. A worked B played C stemmed D boiled
5. A stem B pan C boil D play

Answer and evidence grid

Gap 5 uses pan out because the explicit contrast is between the original plan's failure and the narrower plan's success. Without that outcome contrast, work out might overlap and the item would be weaker.

Particle and object traps

Part 1 may make the particle decisive, but always read beyond the nearest word.

• boil down to + noun / -ing / whether-clause
• stem from + source or cause
• pan out with no direct object
• work it out, not work out it
• play it out, not play out it

Register matters too. Pan out and work out are natural in ordinary prose and speech, but a highly formal report may choose a more explicit verb. Stem from travels comfortably into analytic writing. Boil down to promises compression and can sound dismissive if the issue genuinely has several important causes.

Common mistakes

• Learning a bare translation without the particle and complement pattern.
• Assuming two verbs cannot overlap. The trial worked out and the trial panned out can both be natural.
• Treating play out as a synonym for implement.
• Using pan out transitively.
• Reversing the result and origin around stem from.
• Following boil down to with a base verb.
• Selecting the rarest-looking option before reading the whole passage.

Quick check

Choose the only option licensed by each complete context.

1. The team did not merely summarize the report; it reduced it to one decisive finding. The report was ______ to a single conclusion. A panned out B boiled down C stemmed from D played out

2. We need to calculate the total before Friday. Can you ______ it out? A work B pan C stem D boil

3. The researchers are not predicting success. They are asking how the conflict may develop over several years. How might it ______ out? A pan B stem C play D boil

4. The error originated in a mislabeled data column. It ______ from that labeling mistake. A boiled B stemmed C worked D panned

5. The trial failed to produce the hoped-for result. It did not ______ out. A stem B boil C pan D play

Answers: 1 B; the transitive passive preserves the compression meaning. 2 A; work it out means calculate it and places the pronoun correctly. 3 C; development, not success, is foregrounded. 4 B; stem from links result to origin. 5 C; the explicit issue is success versus failure.

Fresh practice

Write an 80–100-word Part 1-style passage about a museum testing timed admission. Create five gaps, one for each expression in this article. Give four grammatically plausible options per gap. Then annotate the exact clue that excludes every distractor. If two answers remain natural after you read the full passage, revise the context rather than declaring one “more advanced.”

To build active control of phrasal verbs and their boundaries, try Lyra Practice.

Sources

• C1 Advanced exam format — Cambridge English
• C1 Advanced preparation — Cambridge English

Related

• Cambridge C1 Part 1: Collocations and Shades of Meaning
• Cambridge C1 Vocabulary List
• Cambridge C1 Open Cloze: One-Word Grammar and Phrases
• Cambridge C1 Key Word Transformations Vocabulary

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