The Traps Hidden in Multiple Choice
Here's something most children never realise: on a five-option question, four of the answers are wrong on purpose. The people who write the test don't pad the list with obvious nonsense. They fill it with the precise numbers your child would arrive at by making a common, predictable slip. The whole point is that the trap answer feels right.
Once you can name the traps, they lose a lot of their power. Here are the ones that come up again and again.
The classic baits
- The forgotten step, the number you'd get if you stopped one operation early. Tempting precisely because it feels like a finished answer.
- The wrong operation, adding where you needed to subtract, or vice versa. Especially common in "work backwards" problems.
- The unit slip, the correct number in the wrong unit. Grams where the question wanted kilograms; minutes where it wanted hours.
- The misread diagram, the value you'd read off a shape or protractor if you didn't notice it was drawn at an odd angle, or not to scale.
Worth saying out loud to your child
"Just because my answer is one of the options doesn't mean I'm right, it might be the trap." The little hit of confidence from seeing your answer listed is exactly what the test is built to exploit.
"Work backwards" problems deserve extra care
Reverse problems, where you're given the end state and asked for the start, are the ones tutors warn about most. Take: "A bus has 87 passengers after 15 people got on. How many were on board before?" The right move is to subtract; the trap option adds. Children rush these because the numbers look friendly and the story feels simple, and they reach for the more natural-feeling operation without thinking.
The one habit that beats traps
Before locking in an answer, re-read what the question actually asked. Did it want the remainder, or the total? The cost, or the change? The number of boys, or the number of girls? An astonishing share of multiple-choice errors come from answering a subtly different question than the one printed, getting the maths perfectly right, then choosing the option that answers a question nobody asked.
Drill this as a two-second ritual: solve, then glance back at the question and confirm "this is the thing they wanted" before committing. It costs almost no time and saves more marks than any amount of extra speed.
Selective Edge is not affiliated with the NSW Department of Education or the Selective High Schools Test administrators. This guide is general information for parents, drawn from publicly available test materials.