Given: 25q + 10d + 5n = 85
Find: Is q greater than or equal to 2?
(1)
Child uses 8 coins. Before trying any combos, notice that if all 8 coins are dimes, that will fall short of the 85 cent price. And we can't have 8 coins of dimes and nickels only because the price will be even less. This means that we'll have at least 1 quarter. Let's draw a table for some combos.
| q | d | n | total price |
| 1 | 5 | 2 | 85 |
| 2 | 1 | 5 | 85 |
Note that once we find a combo that works using 1 quarter, we can move on to looking for a combo that works for 2 quarters. This is because there will be just 1 combo that works for 1 quarter. Here's why: if we start with the combo that works (1q, 5d, 2n), if we remove dimes and add nickels, then that's a net negative, so price will be less than 85. And if we add dimes and remove nickels, that will be a net positive, so price will be greater than 85 cents.
So, table above shows 2 combos that work. One uses 1 quarter, one uses 2 quarters. Not sufficient
(2)
Because of the table in (1), we can see that this is insufficient in 5 seconds.
(1) + (2)
Again because of the table in (1), we can quickly see that both statements combined are insufficient.
Answer: E