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> but it was pretty clear that to get the lowest possible score you have to know the correct response to every question.

Not exactly. To get the lowest possible score, you only need to know a incorrect response to every questions. This is a very different thing, as it is not uncommon for a question to have some obviously incorrect answers.

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Knowing an absolutely incorrect answer to every question is difficult to ensure. It leaves things up to chance since you cannot prepare for the exact questions you get. On the other hand, knowing all the correct answers is perfectly doable.

This is not true. For example you know that the result of 5.123.443 x 9.999.999 can't be 42. But you dont immediately know the correct answer, which is harder.

Making the answer hard to deduce/calculate is only one side of the difficulty. The other side is making the question hard to decipher. I don't think the SAT has any questions that are as straightforward as your example, but I could be wrong.

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