What determines whether or not a question can be considered a GMAT question? We know that GMAT questions that are based on seemingly basic concepts can be camouflaged such that they may “appear” to be very hard. Is it true that a question requiring a lot of intricate calculations will not be tested in GMAT? Yes, however it is certainly possible that a question may “appear” to involve a lot of calculations but can actually be solved without any!
In the same way, it is possible that a question may appear to be testing very obscure concepts, while it is really solvable by using only basic ones.
We have often heard students exclaim that this problem isn’t relevant to the GMAT since it “tests an obscure number property”. It is a question that troubles many people, so we decided to tackle it in today’s post.
We can easily solve this problem with just some algebraic manipulation, without needing to know any obscure properties! Let’s take a look:
Ψ and λ represent non-zero digits, and (Ψλ)² – (λΨ)² is a perfect square. What is that perfect square?
(A) 121
(B) 361
(C) 576
(D) 961
(E) 1,089
The symbols Ψ and λ are confusing to work with, so the first thing we will do is replace them with the variables 
and 
.
The question then becomes: and represent non-zero digits, and 
is a perfect square. What is that perfect square?
As I mentioned before, we have heard students complain that this question isn’t relevant to the GMAT because it “uses an obscure number property”. Now here’s the thing – most advanced number property questions CAN be solved in a jiffy using some obscure number property such as, “If you multiply a positive integer by its 22nd multiple, the product will be divisible by …” etc. However, those questions are not actually about recalling these so-called “properties” – they are about figuring out the properties using some generic technique, such as pattern recognition.
For this question, the complaint is often that is that the question tests the property, “
(where 
and 
are two digit mirror image positive integers) is a multiple of 11 and 9.” It doesn’t! Here is how we should solve this problem, instead:
Given the term 
, where and are digits, how will you square this while keeping the variables and ?
Let’s convert to 
, because is simply the placeholder for the tens digit of the number. If you are not sure about this, consider the following:
…etc.
Along those same lines:
Going back to our original question:
We know now that the expression is a multiple of 9 and 11. We would not have known this beforehand. Now we’ll just use the answer choices to figure out the solution. Only 1,089 is a multiple of both 9 and 11, so the answer must be (E).
We hope you see that this question is not as hard as it seems. Don’t get bogged down by unknown symbols – just focus on the next logical step at each stage of the problem.
