Question on extremely hard made up math SAT problem I don't believe is solvable

The book may be great fun, but it isn’t going to do anything for an SAT score.

Anyone who gets through the mountains of SAT relevant math problems out there and is still not able to ace the section has a problem that cannot be solved by expanding into SAT irrelevant questions, no matter how difficult they are.

I believe the above reflects my own ideas. After all, except for a few extremely rare cases, students do not have the time to exhaust all the “commonly” available resources. IMHO, looking for material that is known to exceed what has appeared on previous tests falls into the category of attempting to memorize the entire Webster or some of those silly x,000 list of words that mercenaries compiled.

While we do not know (yet and for sure) what will tested on the final versions of the 2016 SAT, the past has not been peppered with surprises. Anyone who follows the QAS releases or participate in discussions should have a good handle on the new twists that might appear on the next tests, and especially when one identifies the experimental sections. The nature of the SAT forces them to introduce rubrics that have been previously calibrated. Hence, the absence of surprises.

Fwiw, students --and tutors-- who are looking for a superior challenge might want to try their luck with the Math Level I tests. A much better proposal than going through books a la Chung or Eiblum.

Problems like the one I cited are garbage. However, most of the problems in those books, are hard because they pout together several SAT math ideas or add some complexity to typical SAT math problems. So I don’t agree they are not useful. However, there are other materials I would use first.