I was reading The Houdini Solution; the last chapter ends with Einstein's Puzzle. Kevin says it can only be solved by 2% of the world's population, but this website claims that the average time to solve it is about an hour.
In the riddle, there are 5 houses of 5 different colors with owners of 5 different nationalities. Each owns a different kind of pet, prefers a different kind of drink and smokes a different brand of cigar. It took at least two hours before I figured out who owns the fish.
On the other hand, I came up with the answer to Kevin's version of the puzzle in 5 minutes. All it took was writing all possible values for each variable in 5 columns and crossing out options as I read the list of clues.
I've always had more admiration for fast thinkers who can dream up creative solutions on the fly, and less patience for methodical people who are obsessed with developing procedures. Now I see the value of having reproducible processes.
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