I think it's just sloppy and unintentional, especially for a timed test. I find things like this common in my kids' Math homework. (I don't blame common core,

I think it's just sloppy and unintentional, especially for a timed test. I find things like this common in my kids' Math homework. (I don't blame common core, I blame bad text book writers.) I also had to run the interpretation of 209 "salads and an unknown number of drinks" through my head as I parsed it. I do see the value in learning how to remove ambiguity when trying to solve a problem, but I'm not convinced that is what they are intentionally testing. On the other hand, I really liked how it says you may not use a calculator on the ones that did not need a calculator -- especially when running off to a calculator would have only made things worse!