Is there a method to solve these type of questions? I can never figure these out.

In the problem it said that the left side had a factor of (ax^2+b). When I set x1 equal to random(10), that makes sense to me but how can you just assign "a" a number when you dont know it actually and how does that magically just make them all whole numbers. Please help.

@John Hoegerl

Should I just let gecko get p1?

if i had to pick between one, which one would yall recommend to help me boost my score?