This year, the total number of hotdogs sold was higher than total numb

Thank You for your reply. After knowing correct answer, answer choice seems to be correct but I would still prefer 'this year'. As, same is used in Choice B s well.
I want to know if Choice A would appear as is, if had put in real GMAT or GMAT usually avoids such possible misinterpreted Choices?
I am new to CR so may be this sounds silly to you but Please bear with me here.

-Ankit

Hello, Ankit. No, your question is not silly at all. I know what you mean about ambiguity of meaning, a feature that is a hallmark of incorrect answers in SC, for example. That is fine to prefer the phrasing of one choice over another, but it is really the content that steers one answer into a correct path and another into one that is off-course. I would like to say that official GMAT™ questions always avoid such issues of potential misinterpretation, but sometimes that is not so. You have to be careful in weighing up the pros and cons, in terms of holistic meaning, of each answer choice in CR and RC before committing to something, without getting caught up too much in the way the same idea may be conveyed. In choice (B), for instance, even ignoring the temporal part, you have fewer people are eating hotdogs, and no information from the passage allows you to make such a conclusion about the number of people who may be eating hotdogs altogether--notice that Henry's is not even mentioned specifically. In your first sweep of the answer choices, look for obvious outliers to pick off, then go back through whatever remains and see if you can determine which answer is easier to argue against. Get rid of that one and choose the other.

I hope that helps. Keep the questions coming if you have them. That is what GMAT Club is all about.

- Andrew

The first line of argument should be "This year, the total number of hotdogs sold by henry's was higher than total number sold last year." Because if it's not mentioned then E could also be correct.

So Lets say the total number of hotdogs sold last year = 100
Total number of hodogs sold this year = 200

Henry sold last year = 50
henry sold this year = 40 (since at every store, there was a decrease in number of hotdogs sold)

so henry's share (last year) = 50/100 = 50%
Henry's share (this year) = 40/200 = 20%

Also A could be invalidated by considering the case of new chain in town.

please share your insight. Is there any alternate explanation?