Trap Recognition Across Content
▶︎ Watch it animatedinteractive step-through · ~3 min · optionalEvery wrong answer choice on the test is a real mistake, pre-computed, which makes the choices a map of the traps. The points leak in the reading, a tempting value that is really the fingerprint of a nameable move (legs added unsquared, a discount reported as a price), and in the checking: the one-second tests (size, sign, direction, range, units, the reread) that would convict a trap answer but never get run.
These patterns aren't about any single content skill. They're the recognition layer over all of Units 1 through 5: whether a wrong value's mistake can be named, and whether the check matched to the error type runs before the answer goes in the grid.
The work
4 ways in · any order
Lesson
Trap Recognition Across Content
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Read wrong answers as fingerprints of specific moves, run size-sign-direction-range-units checks before recomputing, match the check to the error type, and reserve the reread for the reporting errors no arithmetic can catch. The capstone lesson works both skills across content from every unit, and it saves the trap for last: the check that confirms the solution while the wrong quantity goes in the grid.
Diagnostic
10-item topic check
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Ten items across the two patterns: naming the mistake behind a shown wrong answer, solving cross-content items past their classic traps, and choosing the check matched to the error type. Take it cold to surface the ones still catching you, or after the lesson to confirm they are gone.
Grid-in Check
Student-produced response
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About a quarter of SAT math answers are typed, not chosen, with no options to react to. These grid-in items diagnose by the value you enter, then route into the same drills the multiple-choice check feeds.
Targeted Practice
Drill a single pattern
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Pick one of the failure modes you've missed and grind it on its own. The round is adaptive: two correct in a row clears the pattern and you move on.