I have been given a brain teaser that asks to choose the properly formatted version of the following sentence:
The road runs beside the red houses and the green house and town houses are nearby.
The two options are thus:
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The road runs beside the red houses, and the green house and town houses are nearby.
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The road runs beside the red houses and the green house, and town houses are nearby.
It seems to me that both answers are grammatically correct, but with two different meanings; either the road is beside only the red house, or it is beside the red and green houses, with the town houses nearby. The question asks which one is grammatically correct.
Best Answer
The only way the meaning could be made precise, without rewording the sentence, would be to introduce some aggressive punctuation.
For example:
This means that the road runs beside both the red houses and green houses.
But
this would mean that the road ran only by the red houses.