Happy 2026! Even though it's a new year, we're continuing the wrap-up of our quiz series with the answers to our trickiest questions. Before the holiday break, we reviewed the phrase nerve-racking. Now, we're onto whoever vs. whomever.

Well, that was the fill-in-the-blank in the quiz question. But the lesson is really about subjects and objects and noun clauses. Here's the question that tripped up most of you:

So "whomever" is the correct answer there, but it's not as simple as just using "whoever" for subjects and "whomever" for objects. Here's what we wrote when we shared the answer last year:

But that's not why "whomever" is correct. Here are two correct sentences:

"The boss said she'll recommend whomever Chris suggests."

"The boss said she'll recommend whoever performs best."

The last part of each sentence is a noun clause. And when you have a noun clause, you isolate the noun clause when you're choosing the pronoun. In the first sentence, "whomever" is the object of the verb "suggests" in the noun clause that ends the sentence. In the second sentence, "whoever" is the subject in the noun clause.

So even though both sentences contain noun clauses that are objects of "recommend," that's not the determining factor.

We have a few more reviews in store for quizzes that tripped you up. Is there a quiz that stumped you? Hit reply and let us know.

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