This study attempted to identify the things that help elementary school students solve verbal problems. Among the types of things included for examination were: the attributes of problems, the tools used, and the problem transformations that were possible. The summary of findings is comprised of 29 diverse types of statements grouped under four headings: (1) Problem Difficulty, (2) Effectiveness of Hint, (3) Calculator Usage, and (4) Special Analyses. These findings included: (1) By sixth grade, most single step problems could be solved by children of all ability levels; (2) For all grade levels and all ability levels, "Personalize" was a helpful problem-solving hint; (3) The pattern of calculator usage by low-ability students was very similar to the calculator usage of average-ability students. Both groups used a calculator more often than high ability students; and (4) Contrary to the results of prior research, problems containing extraneous information which was similar to the problem data were not more difficult than problems with "unlike" data. (MK)