KA-0126Time triage: now, later, or guess
5 points, difficulty 3 of 3Level 5–6about 60sYou are 20 minutes into a 75-minute paper of 30 questions, still on question 9, and four minutes in with no progress. What is the best move?
Hints
Take them one at a time. The first gives nothing away.
1A nudge
The four minutes are gone either way.
2The strategy
Ask what the next minute is worth, not what the last four cost. There are 21 questions you have not read, and a blank scores nothing while a guess costs nothing.
3The full solution
Guess, mark it to revisit, and move on. That banks a chance of a mark, costs nothing if wrong, and frees the time for questions you have not even seen.
Solution— no shortcut on this one
Time already spent cannot be recovered, so it should not affect the decision. What matters is what the next minute buys: on question 9 it buys another attempt at something that has resisted four minutes; on question 10 it buys a fresh question worth the same marks. Guessing first is what makes moving on free - Kangaroo deducts nothing for a wrong answer, so a filled bubble is never worse than a blank one, and marking it means you can return if time allows. The transferable idea: guess, mark, move - in that order, because the guess is what protects you if you never come back.
Why this is on the test: Triage decides more marks than any single technique, and letting invested time drive the choice is the bias that costs the most.