It is interesting that as I read this particular chapter I was amazed at how our brain really does think inside mental boxes, if you will. Many times it takes effort to think outside of the box to come up with a solution to the problem. My favorite example from the book was the 9 dot test where you have to connect the 9 dots with only using 4 lines.
I have been training myself to look outside of the box ever since I was younger. I loved problems like this one so much that in middle school I was part of a group called Math Counts and would do nothing but examine questions such as these and other math problems and then compete against other teams. While I was by no means the best person on the team it was always fun and challenging for me to look at a problem and have to dissect it and look at it from a different view. I am not sure if I have seen this particular "puzzle" before or not but I had it figured out in a few different ways in a matter of minutes.
It's a good practice to be a good puzzle solvers, kind'a like doing mental sit-ups every day.
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