Bunuel

The figure shown above consists of three identical circles that are tangent to each other. If the area of the shaded region is \(64\sqrt{3}-32\pi\), what is the radius of each circle?
(A) 4
(B) 8
(C) 16
(D) 24
(E) 32
the way I did, even though not traditional! I first solved The equation which equates to 10 +- (as long as you remember v3 is 1.7). And judging by the GMAT style the answer is usually apparent between the answers, so for our question the answer is 16 or 8 because there are doubles in the answers (which usually tries to trick you), if you try 8, your answer for the area of the shaded region will be 9 +-, which would be a correct guess. I know this method isn't scientific but would still get you the right answer pretty fast.