English Translation
Stop the countdown.
there’s no way of knowing it’s not detén or detenga
Yeah, imperatives are a bit… special.
“Stop the countdown” in English might be directed to you (singular or plural) or to them.
But in Spanish, the verb already is implied whom this verb is directed to:
detén (you informal),
detenga (you formal),
detengan (they).
In this case, it’s directed to a group.
Nonetheless, if an emperor says “stop the countdown”, you stop it 
.
Jokes aside, let me know if it helped you out!
My general advice on this issue is to create a Hint saying “tú/vosotros/usted/ustedes/vos”, so you will know which imperative to use next time you come across the cloze in question.
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let me know if it helped you out
I appreciate your effort, and keep it mind that’s not only for me but also for other users. Sorry to say, but it didn’t. It wasn’t my objective to hear more about the grammar I’ve already known. If I hadn’t known what you pointed out I wouldn’t obviously have been able to indicate the flaw in the sentence. My objective is to suggest to the sentence moderators to either accept the other alternatives and or hint that the preferred form so that the learner is aware of it. The problem is that neither of the other alternatives is accepted and the user has no way of knowing the right answer which introduces randomness to the answer. So the user is awarded not for their knowledge but randomly as they have 25% chance of hitting the right answer. It makes it a gambling and activates dopamine pathways which doesn’t really contribute to good learning long term.
Moreover, the motivation behind the posts I write in this manner is to alleviate the learner’s frustration and make it more likely to motivate the learner. The current state of the sentence makes it less motivating and it’s a systemic issue on the site, hence I want to raise attention to it and I believe the forum is the right medium to do it. Overall, I find about 80-90% of the potentially ambiguous sentences in the Spanish course to be flawed and 10-20% to be made right. Moreover, I believe that on the site for whose services I pay there should be a conscious demand to reach as little ambiguity as possible, and I believe it should be raised from 10-20% to 90% even if 100% is unreachable.
btw you forgot about tened
of course but do you believe it should be the user’s responsibility or the site moderators’ responsibility to create such a hint?
I’m willing to suffer the minor inconvenience, thinking that the effort needed to perform the huge task of wading through tens of thousands sentences in numerous language pairings would require a big staff that could only be covered by an increase in the price of subscription. I honestly don’t think this kind of feature would increase the number of subscribers in sufficient numbers to cover the cost.
Besides, not everyone likes pre-packaged hints. I actually prefer to add my own hints in the format I like best.
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