When you see sloppy numbers like 17 and 16,660, it's always a clue that you probably shouldn't actually do the math. Some people will do the math and divide 16,660 by 17 to find t, and they'll get the right answer.... eventually. This question is not meant to distinguish between those who can do it and those who can't; it's meant to distinguish between those who do it quickly and those who do it slowly and painfully. At any rate, here's my explanation:

We have an equation $17t = $16,660

To find t you can obviously divide 16,660 by 17. But in a QC problem a valuable technique when you see a variable vs. a number is to plug in the number into the equation and see what happens. If we plug in quantity B, 1,000, into the equation, we get $17,000 = $16,660. This indicates that we would need to plug in something smaller to actually make them equal. Thus, t must be smaller than 1,000.
Remember, you don't always need an actual value for a QC problem. "Something smaller than 1,000" is good enough here.

Bump for further discussion