As is often the case, this month’s brain teaser has a lot in common with typical, hard GMAT and GRE questions in ways that are explained in the solution to the question. This is another good one! Enjoy!
Gary and Barry race in a 50 yard dash. Gary wins by 5 yards. They decide to race again, and to make things more equal, Gary starts 5 yards behind the original start line. Assuming that both runners run at the same speeds they ran at in the first race, who wins the second race or do they tie?
Answer:
Gary wins again. From the first race, it should be clear that Gary runs 50 yards in the time it takes Barry to run 45 yards. In the second race, since Gary starts 5 yards behind, Gary and Barry will be side-by-side with 5 yards to go (because Gary will have run 50 yards and Barry will have run 45 yards + the 5 yard head start he had). Since Gary is a faster runner, he will finish ahead of Barry in the remaining 5 yards.
This question gets at many of the things that tend to happen on hard GMAT and GRE questions. First, the trap answer that they tie should be recognized as a trap. When things feel easy and straightforward, almost too good to be true, they usually are! Another aspect of this question that aligns with what often happens on GMAT Data Sufficiency questions and GRE Quantitative Comparisons is that we are not being asked to calculate the runners’ exact speeds. We need only compare them! This is an especially important strategy to be mindful of on GRE QCs!