One of my favorite nonfictional books is “Conceptual Blockbusting” by James L. Adams. The book describes the conceptual blocks which are “mental walls that blocks the problem solver from correctly perceiving a problem or conceiving its solution”. There is the set of puzzles that intended to understand how the conceptual blocks can hamper the problem solving. I believe that reading this book can really help you to become a better thinker. Indeed it’s helpful if you aren’t a genius like Albert Einstein. Every time I read this book I try to figure out how the conceptual blocks can hamper the solving of the problems that I face doing my job every day. And recently I found the interesting issue…
Delimiting the problem area poorly.
One of the perceiving conceptual blocks is tendency to delimit the problem too closely. It is demonstrated using the following puzzle:
Draw no more than four straight lines without lifting the pencil from the paper which will cross through all nine dots:
Work on it a while. One possible solution is shown here
A lot of people don’t exceed the imaginary boundary even though it is not in the definition of the problem at all. The overly strict limits are a block in the mind of the solver.
Find cycle in the graph puzzle
Consider the following puzzle.
The input data is the graph representation, for example the instance of LinkedList class. The output is Boolean value which is true if the graph has the cycle and false otherwise. The constraints are no additional memory should be used.
Try to solve this puzzle. In the next post I will explain the issues that hamper this puzzle solving and why they appear.
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