You won’t always have to set up an equation to solve a word problem. Some of the word problems you’ll encounter on the GRE won’t fall into recognizable textbook categories. Many of these problems are designed to test your analytical and deductive logic. You can solve them with common sense and a little basic arithmetic. Ask yourself how it would be helpful to arrange the information, such as by drawing a diagram or making a table.
In these problems, the issue is not so much translating English into math as simply using your head. The problem may call for nonmath skills, including the ability to organize and keep track of different possibilities, the ability to visualize something (for instance, the reverse side of a symmetrical shape), the ability to think of the exception that changes the answer to a problem, or the ability to deal with overlapping groups.
Example:
If ! and ∫ are digits and (!!)(∫∫) = 60∫, what is the value of ∫ ?
Since each of the symbols represents a digit from 0–9, we know that the product of the multiplication equals a value from 600 to 609. We know that the two quantities multiplied each consist of a two-digit integer in which both digits are the same. So list the relevant two-digit integers (00, 11, 22, 33, 44, 55, 66, 77, 88, and 99) and see which two of them can be multiplied together to obtain a product in the 600 to 609 range. Only (11)(55) satisfies this requirement. The ∫ symbol equals 5.