I met this problem in an English test at my school this morning. The requirement of the question was to rewrite the sentence with the word given in the brackets and use between 2 and 6 words. This was the sentence that troubles me.
No one listened to what the policeman was saying last night.
-> What.................last night. (Ears)
What I wrote was "What 'being said wasn't all ears on' last night" but that didn't include the policeman and I wonder if "wasn't" would be counted as a word or two. If it was not limited between 2 and 6 words, I would rewrite the sentence as "What the policeman was saying was not all ears on last night". Could you help me with this problem?