Mental jigsaw

[threemonkeys]

I actually got to solve a real live logic puzzle at work this morning. Not a contrived one but an actual real live work related one.

It was of the "A requires B, B requires C, C requires A, all in a linear flow" type of puzzle. Only it was not as neat (or impossible) as that as there were more steps and primary and exception flow conditions to worry about. It was the exception flows where the problem manifested itself - event C was actually the "not happening" of an action.

Without going into great detail, I was able to solve it because it was possible to separate the initiation of an event from its impact - This had the effect of increasing the number and complexity of the steps but gave the potential to remove the logical loop.

It is very satisfying to solve this type of puzzle. I wish they turned up more often but they have been rare of late.

Comments

[beagl.livejournal.com]

In a slightly different twist on problem solving, I was once talking to one of our developers about a program they had to write. We discussed the problem for a while and they talked about some of the methods they'd thought of to solve it. Suddenly I realised:

"Hey, you're trying to solve the travelling salesman problem!"

"What's that?"

Damn self-taught programmers with no comp-sci background. :-)

[threemonkeys.livejournal.com]

*blush*
I did lots of comp-sci papers in between chem ones but I never came across that term until after many years in the industry. It may be because one of our lecturers didn't like "cute" terms and he was the guy who covered all the network node traversal stuff.

Or maybe it was because I did a lot of sleeping in those lectures. :-}