I'd think of the thought process a bit differently than lclarkmichalek, though of course with the same result.

To get close to 952, you can quickly think of 106x9. 106 is easy to obtain and you have a 3. You can get another 3 from 75/25. You're now at 954 with only a 50 left. If you could divide by 25, that would give you the 2 you're missing but you already used the 25, unless you were to divide later. So instead of doing 106x3x(75/25), you do (106x3x75-50)/25.

He could have certainly thought of it another way but based on how players typically play that game, that would be a somewhat logical progression.