Hey Mike, I am pretty strong in word probs, and on this one, I keep getting an answer of 7 chips, but correct answer says 11 chips. I don’t get it !

Erin and Amy are playing poker. At a certain point in the game, Erin has 3 more chips than Amy. On the next hand, Erin wins 4 chips from Amy. Now how many more chips does Erin have than Amy?
A) -1
B) 1
C) 7
D) 11
E) 14

The C cars in a car service use a total of G gallons of gasoline per week. If each of the cars uses the same amount of gasoline, then, at this rate, which of the following represents the number of gallons used by 5 of the cars in 2 weeks?
A) 10cg
E)10g/c
Thanks to one of your methods, I first tried using c=1 and randomly chose 5 gallons to plug in. But then I got A, which was wrong. I later used c=2 and g=5, but then I got E, which is the right answer? Why doesn’t c=1 work? Thank you

A train started at station S and has been traveling r miles per hour for t hours. In terms of r and t , how many miles from station S had the train travelled 3t/4 hours ago ?
(A) rt/12
(B) 3rt/4
(C) rt
(D) 4rt/3
(E) rt/4

Would you say that for the hard rated questions on math with variables a general go-to strategy to do is plug in? I’ve just been looking over the Blue-Book and it seems like all the hard ones with variables are susceptible to plugging in.

s=t
g=h-5

If h is 6 less than t in the equations above, then g is how much less than s?

A)1
B)5
C)6
D)9
E)11

Hi Mike, I scored a 660 on the math section on the SAT. I did not answer the last two or three math questions from each section so I wouldn’t risk getting them wrong and so I would have more time for the easy/medium questions. My main question is how do I deal with the hardest math questions on the SAT? Are there certain strategies that work better for the harder questions (i.e. backsolving tends to work better on the harder questions)? I do own a copy of your Math Guide, by the way.