I love puzzles of all kinds. I love jigsaw puzzles, crossword puzzles, and sudokus, and logic puzzles. I don’t just love jigsaw puzzles, I love big ones with lots of pieces;  I don’t just love crossword puzzles, I recently learned how to do (American) cryptics;  I don’t just love sudoku, I love sudoku variants, like knights-move.  My latest obsession (shared with my 10-year-old daughter) is a set of puzzles created by Japanese publisher Nikoli.

And one thing I’ve been thinking a lot about lately is how to start. The thing is – “breaking in” to a puzzle is the key to getting enough momentum to start solving and having fun, but it’s a different skill than actual mid-way solving.

This year, we had some major water damage in our home.  I became BFFs with my plumber and electrician, and one thing I appreciated about both of them was their approach to troubleshooting and problem solving.  Once the demo was done and it was time to rebuild everything, our electrician came by with his crew.

I was completely overwhelmed and panicked.  “Where do you even start?” I asked him. He smiled. This is a man who has texted me line diagrams in the middle of the night. He knows how I think. “We start with the wiring.  We take it down and see what kind of shape it’s in.” I loved how confident he was, and how with experience comes an instinct of where to start.

There are some confident rules I have like that around puzzle types I know.

• With a classic crossword puzzle, I look for something I can answer on the top row or down the left side.  That gives me the largest surface area of first letters to start with. 
• With a Fillomino, I look for spaces around the 1’s, because those are filled with the same number as one of the other adjacent spaces.
• Last night, I tried a Matsu – we learned that white circles on edges were good places to start.  (Go ahead – give it a try)
• I’ve been really enjoying the “Fog of War“ sudoku puzzles, and find that where to start is much simpler with them, because you have a lot less information in a more concentrated area. 

Sometimes this fails. Miserably.  My rule for jigsaw puzzles has always been to start with the edges and then work my way in.  I also am a masochist of sorts and complete jigsaw puzzles without looking at the picture.  So when I got going on this puzzle (a wonderful gift from my folks), starting with edges didn’t work, and it took me a while to understand why not.

So I am thinking about how this can be applicable to work. Where can we “break in” to a problem?  How do we develop an instinct or skill around where to start with problem solving?   And how do we understand what to do when our instinct or system fails because the ground beneath us changes?