22B, there really seem to be some very bright kids (and adults) who struggle with memorizing the tables. This is not the case for my kids at all, but after seeing quite a few 99th% kids in DD's magnet have the issue, as well as reading posts here about it, I have to conclude that it is relatively common.
IMO it has got to be hard to do things like long division without having the tables down, but it seems that some manage.
I have the sort of opposite kind of kid (DD9) who is an amazing calculator--give her a page of hard long division and she will do it all perfectly--but who sometimes cannot follow conceptual things like word problems. She would prefer for all her math to be numbers only. She is great at mental math and would like that 24 game, but give her something like "A train leaves Philadelphia at 9:30 pm..." or "Bob is making a cabinet out of 9 pieces of wood..." and it's much harder for her.
