Past: He doesn't know how the game is supposed to be played

[Navi]

-He doesn’t know how the game is supposed to be played.

1-What are you talking about? He has won two gold medals.
2-What are you talking about? He won two gold medals.
(He won them at an unspecified time in the past. Perhaps the speaker himself doesn’t know when he won them.)

Are both sentences 1 and 2 acceptable replies to the first sentence?
Is there any difference in their meanings?

[Conchita]

Both sentences have the same meaning, but the tense normally used for an unstated time in the past is the present perfect. Thus, the correct sentence is the first one:

1-What are you talking about? He has won two gold medals.

[Alan]

Hi navi,

You asked whether these two were acceptable:

He doesn’t know how the game is supposed to be played.

1-What are you talking about? He has won two gold medals.
2-What are you talking about? He won two gold medals.
(He won them at an unspecified time in the past. Perhaps the speaker himself doesn’t know when he won them.)

Are both sentences 1 and 2 acceptable replies to the first sentence?
Is there any difference in their meanings?

In a sense they are both acceptable. The past simple in number 2 is acceptable because we don’t know about what happened previously in the conversation and to my mind it suggests that reference has already been made to a game in the past.

Alan