• Choose a category
• All
• Classic-Fiction

By Root 780 0

disappear within the camouflage of the stone path beneath her. “How clumsy of me,” she said, while looking toward the money-lender. “No matter though. If you look at the stone held in the bag, we’ll be able to tell which color I must have chosen.”

With a sense of shock, and with no intention of admitting his dishonesty, the moneylender allowed the girl to reach back into the bag and reveal a black stone. “I chose the white stone!” the girl shouted with joy.

In this way, by using creative thinking, the girl changes what seems an impossible situation into an extremely advantageous one. The girl is actually better off than if the moneylender had been honest and had put one black and one white pebble into the bag, for then she would have had only an even chance of being saved. As it is, she is sure of remaining with her father and at the same time having his debt canceled. Creative thinking might result in two possibilities:

1. Before choosing, the girl should demand the opportunity to change colors, even offering to let the moneylender reach into the bag and choose a stone for her.

2. The girl should choose a stone, fumble it to the ground to conceal its color, and ask to see the color of the remaining stone in the money bag (just as she did in this story).

What types of things most hinder our ability to unleash creative thinking? The answer lies in distinguishing between programmed versus non-programmed responses.

Programmed responses are essential in everyday life, saving us from having to engage in deep thought in order to do routine tasks, e.g., going to the store, driving a car, or saying “hello” while anticipating a familiar response. However, programmed responses form barriers when we encounter novel situations, requiring non-programmed responses.

Problem 1: Stroke

Add one stroke or character to solve or make sense of the following:

IX = 6

Note: For answers and proposed solutions to exercises and problems, see the Answers and Explanations that follow at the back of this book.

See solution

Problem 2: Mop

Make sense of the following: “The floor is dirty because Sally mopped it.”

See solution

Problem 3: Pattern

Based on the pattern below, place each of the characters “E F G H I” in their proper position both above and below the line.

See solution

Problem 4: Nine Dots

Draw no more than four straight lines (without lifting the pencil or pen from the paper) in order to cross through all nine dots.

See solution

Problem 5: Two Water Buckets

A circus owner sends one of his clowns to bring water back from a nearby river. The owner wants to mix the water with a special health concentrate to give to the elephants, and needs exactly seven gallons of water. He gives the clown a five-gallon bucket and a three-gallon bucket and tells him to bring back exactly seven gallons of water. How can the clown measure out exactly seven gallons of water using nothing but these two buckets and not guessing at the amount?

See solution

DIVERGENT VS. CONVERGENT THINKING

Tip #4: Convergent thinking focuses the mind; divergent thinking opens the mind.

At any point in the analytic process, from the very beginning to the very end, we are engaged in one of two thinking modes: convergence or divergence.

Convergence means bringing together and moving toward one point. Whenever we take a narrower view of a problem, focusing our mind on a single aspect of the puzzle, we are in a convergent mode. Whenever we take a broader view of a problem, whether by examining evidence more thoroughly, gathering new evidence, or entertaining alternative solutions, we are in a divergent mode.

While divergent thinking opens the mind to new ideas and thoughts, convergent thinking closes the mind by viewing a problem ever more narrowly until it focuses on — and produces — a single solution. An apt simile is a camera lens that can zoom in until the subject fills the aperture (convergence) or adjust to broaden the field of view around the subject (divergence). An even more dramatic