We sort of gave away the answer with the wording of this problem. Oops. We have a problem with that. If you haven't seen The Usual Suspects, you should steer clear of us. We will definitely blow the ending for you. It isn't possible to factor this polynomial, but why not? If we could factor the polynomial as (x + m)(x + n), we would need mn = 9 and m + n = 8. There aren't two integers that multiply together to give 9 and add together to give 8. We tried everything; we even took out an ad in the paper, but no luck. 1 and 9 don't work. 3 and 3 don't work. -1 and -9 don't work. -3 and -3 don't work. There aren't any pairs of numbers left to try that multiply to give 9, so we can't factor the polynomial. Now we're out 25 for that ad. | 
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