Although not directly germane to this problem, the following link shows how similar concepts apply:
http://mathforum.org/dr.math/faq/faq.fly.trains.html
There are students who will try to apply what they learned and have become comfortable with, namely the quadratic formula. In the bee problem, chances are that a few people here, starting with MITer, will be familiar with http://mathworld.wolfram.com/Series.html but the reality remains the same. Almost every “puzzle” on the SAT could be solved within a few seconds. When someone embarks on a lengthy journey of seemingly complicated factors, chances are that he or she missed a key element in the question or the … proposed answers.
Being alert for possible time sinks is one of the tenets of the SAT.