Probably acceptable as worded but I wouldn't divulge anything else about the problem.
I feel the same way as a 4th time taker. What burns me the most is that I've flip flopped the sections I've passed. Also, (2) of the exams I certainly didn't feel like I had the time to finish (no time to check either). I took the PE years ago and thought it was the easiest test I've ever sat for (I've sat through harder interview exams). The PE took me (2) hours per section and the proctor told me good luck when I handed it to her on the way out. I knew I had the PE in the bag. I also took the Vertical, and though it was slightly harder than the PE, I thought it was very fair and still left knowing I passed. For the lateral, I've taken (2) review courses (EET and School of PE), bought and read (4) of the (5) Seaoc books. Read every line of AISC 341-10 and AISC 358-10. Read every line of ASCE 7-10 chapter 11 through 22 and 26 through 30 as well as the commentary as well as the TMS 402/602. I've certainly read the ACI 318-14 chapter 18 multiple times, but that book confuses the devil out of me since they reworked the chapters. You can go from chapter 18 to 10 to 22 to 25 and then 21 just to get an answer (<- that's a wee bit much in my opinion, if anyone in the ACI is reading, please streamline this). Anyway, the point is the exam is hard so don't sweat it. I've beat myself up over this thing for (2) years and I'm well above MENSA membership in IQ (not that it necessarily means anything, but engineers are generally much more intellectually inclined than the average populace). I've also had problems that come up almost in the middle of (2) answers on these exams. I saw (2) on this past exam, one of which I felt I could reasonably guesstimate, the other was a shot in the dark. Unfortunately, it's probably something in the problem statement we missed but who knows. Just get through this thing and run for your state board or some position to get some authority over this and help me push to fix this exam. I don't mind it being hard. I think it should be hard, but it should be engineering hard and people should know exactly why they failed upon leaving. They should certainly not be leaving asking themselves, "What the HELL were they asking for." Otherwise, I believe a disservice is being perpetrated on the examinees and the profession in general. In my opinion, they should just give us a few pieces of a structure and literally ask us to design it from start to finish. Breaking it into cryptic pieces and using cryptic language has to stop. If they just gave you a frame and said, "Hey, Mr. Wannabe SE, design this concrete frame for x-criteria." It would be much more straightforward than the way the exam is currently written. Hell, turn it into a 24 hour exam, but make it reasonably understandable. These "Subject Matter Experts" grading the exam are mostly drunk clowns with big shoes (and no children's birthday party bookings) and people from bum fights with a few reasonably competent people scattered about IMO. Hell, from some of the things I've seen on my previous exams, I wouldn't be surprised if NCEES hired floor sweepers from Labor Ready for grammar checks.