Play All Your Senses
By Peter LloydPuzzles provide relief from the weight of solving real problems for some creative people. No deadlines, no one breathing down your neck, no job on the line. I solve problems all week and then attack the New York Times crossword puzzle on Sunday. It’s nuts, I know. Busman’s holiday. But it keeps me creatively fit and teaches me lessons in problem solving.
As an example, here’s a simple brain teaser. Try to solve it. It doesn’t matter whether you solve it or not. By giving it a try, however, you may learn something about problem solving.You’re in a room with three on-off switches in the off position. Each switch controls one of three incandescent light bulbs, which you cannot see, in the next room. Operate the switches however you choose, so that you can go into the room that houses the light bulbs and determine which switch controls which bulb. You cannot go back into the switch room after you do whatever you do with the switches.If you solve this problem with no further help, good for you. My purpose is to show and prove that problem-solving techniques—like the ones I’m about to recommend—really work.
The Lesson
As suggested by the title of this Workout, you might consider using more than just your sense of sight to solve this challenge. Which of your other five senses can a light bulb affect? How else might a light bulb, especially an incandescent light bulb, tell you whether it’s been on or not? What about the dimension of time? Can you tell whether an unlit light bulb has been on recently?
You should have an answer by now. Better yet, you might also have gained an appreciation for what problem-solving gurus mean when they recommend changing your perspective in order to solve a problem.
What does Michael Michalko mean when he writes about Ideas Having Sex? Or Roxx Marino in Ten Lessons You Can Learn About Innovation by Studying Lady Gaga? What about all of Idea Connection’s Thinking Tools or my Creativity Toolbox or simple Thinking Methods like SCAMPER or complex ones like Synectics or any of the Thinking Methods listed in IdeaConnection’s Thinking Methods.
All of these worthwhile creative-thinking and problem-solving techniques ask you to change your perspective in some way. Unless the solution to a problem jumps right out at you, you will do well to force yourself to consider what your other senses can tell you. It may help to imagine the problem situation from a different dimension of space or time. Always consider and introduce perspectives that do not make themselves obvious.
A Solution
For those of you still struggling with the puzzle, here’s a solution: Turn the first switch on for a minute or so, then turn it off. Turn the second switch on and leave it on. Leave the third switch off. Go into the room and feel the light bulbs that are not lit. The warm one is controlled by the first switch, the lit bulb by the second switch, and the unlit bulb by the third.
Peter Lloyd is co-creator with Stephen Grossman of Animal Crackers, the breakthrough problem-solving tool designed to crack your toughest problems.
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