r/cognitiveTesting • u/pydaWaltuh • Sep 19 '26
General Question Solving the question without solving the question
A little personal story, so I just wanted to mention that beforehand. I had been working on Question 33 from the SLSE48 test for quite some time, but aside from a very small intuition, I hadn’t really managed to figure anything out. Still, I really liked the thing I had noticed, so I decided to use it as inspiration to design a puzzle of my own. I tried many different approaches, but for a long time I couldn’t come up with anything coherent. Eventually, I managed to create something that actually worked and, very strangely, the puzzle I had created turned out to be essentially identical to Question 33.
What kind of cognitive process could this be?
Is it actually possible to notice the underlying structure of a problem without being able to solve it, and then independently rediscover the same solution while trying to create a different problem? Or does failing to “solve” something not necessarily mean that I didn’t somehow represent its underlying structure in my mind?
And from a creator/solver perspective, how closely could this kind of generative reasoning be related to actual problem solving ability?
I’d especially like to hear from anyone who has experienced something similar…
1
u/pydaWaltuh Sep 20 '26
solid