That's the only thing I remember from the test-prep book I bought: a brief paragraph about the "guessing penalty." As the book said, it wasn't a guessing penal

That's the only thing I remember from the test-prep book I bought: a brief paragraph about the "guessing penalty." As the book said, it wasn't a guessing penalty, it was a guessing-wrong penalty. They told you it was a guessing penalty to scare you into not guessing. The penalty was a quarter point. Most questions had four options. So it was already an expected zero points on average, not a penalty, and if you could eliminate a single answer it was a net positive to guess.