Q:

A controversial GRE verbal reasoning question

Source (One of many)

To say the actors were (i)______ their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to (ii)______.

The choices for (i) are:
A. disappointed in
B. accepting of
C. motivated by
The choices for (ii) are:
D. lambast
E. displease
F. suffer
There are three "semi-official" answers (not given by ETS) for this problem: AF, BF, BE. Any of them makes partial sense.
I originally chose AF. Since "understatement" means to say something less important than it really is, (ii) is supposed to be severer than (i).
I wonder how native speakers of English will approach this problem.

A:

If you focus on hard to you'll see that only suffer makes sense for blank (ii).  Is it hard to displease a director who is visibly bored by his cast? No. It is hard to lambaste such a director? No.
And the colon indicates that the second clause flows from and is consonant with the first.  The only phrase there which creates a clause that is consonant with the second one is disappointed in.

A:

To say the actors were disappointed in their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to suffer.

Disappointed in is the only possibility for the first due to the use of understatement.
Suffer is used less often than its synonym tolerate.
The other choices don't really make sense.

A:

To say the actors were (i)______ their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to (ii)______.

I like the way Collins describes understatement: 

If you say that a statement is an understatement, you mean that it does not fully express the extent to which something is true : To say I'm disappointed is an understatement.
[emphasis added]

So, if the word that goes with (i) is negative, it means the situation was even worse than described; if the word is positive, it means the situation was even better. 
Therefore, if we say: 

To say the actors were disappointed in their director is an understatement...

that would mean the actors resented and loathed the director. 
However, if we say: 

To say the actors were accepting of their director is an understatement...

that would mean the actors loved and admired their director. 
Finally if we say: 

To say the actors were motivated by their director is an understatement...

that would mean the actors always wanted to give 110% and put on the best performance possible. 

At this point, we have one answer that is negative (choice A) and two that are positive (choices B and C). 
Now we need to examine the second part of the sentence: 

a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to (ii)______.

If someone is hard to lambast, that would mean they are above criticism. If (ii) were lambast, then (i) must be B or C, because someone who is hard to lambast is above reproach. 
If someone is hard to displease, that means they are easy to please. If someone is easy to please, they are generally well-liked but they probably don't inspire a high degree of motivation. So the only answer I can see going with (ii) being displease is (i) B – accepting of. 
That leaves the final option, hard to suffer. I have the most problem with this one, because the phrase "hard to suffer" simply isn't idiomatic English. (When I Googled "hard to suffer" in quotes, only 10 hits came back, and one of them was a link to this ELL question.) Maybe that's because the writers of this practice exam aren't native speakers. 
Had the final option been hard to work for, I would have paired that with A: 

To say the actors were disappointed in their director is an understatement: a director who is visibly bored by his cast and their performances is hard to work for. 

My best guess is that this is meaning that is intended. After all, even though looking visibly bored with the cast might conceivably be a motivator (through some kind of reverse psychology), I'm guessing that the director's boredom is something that demotivates rather than motivates the actors. 
In conclusion, I think AF is the best answer out of those provided, although I still find "hard to suffer" problematic. Thus, I agree with you: the question is indeed "controversial" and not easy to answer. 

