If x and y are integers and |x - y| = 10, what is the minimum possible value of xy? Answers
A) - 9  B) - 18  C) - 24  D) - 25  E) - 48

Rationale: "sometimes the answer choices to a given question provide a big ' hint ' as to how you can go about solving it . this prompt can also be solved without any complex math ideas - you just need to do a bit of ' brute force ' math and you ' ll have the answer relatively quickly . we ' re told that x and y are integers and | x - y | = 10 . we ' re asked for the minimum possible value of ( x ) ( y ) . since all of the answer choices are negative , this tells us that one of the two variables must be negative ( and the other must be positive ) , so we should restrict our work to those options . if . . . x = 9 , y = - 1 , then xy = - 9 x = 8 , y = - 2 , then xy = - 16 x = 7 , y = - 3 , then xy = - 21 x = 6 , y = - 4 , then xy = - 24 x = 5 , y = - 5 , then xy = - 25 x = 4 , y = - 6 , then xy = - 24 x = 3 , y = - 7 , then xy = - 21 from this , we can conclude the xy will start to get bigger as x continues to decrease down to 1 , so there ' s no need to do any additional work . final answer : d"
Answer: D