Most of the article is only worth skimming through, but don't skim so fast that you miss the kernel at the end ;)<p>> Sometimes, people who don't understand any better confuse the mundane with the divine, mistake hard work for lightning bolts. They couldn't pull off that same stunt, and so they convince themselves that nobody else could, either. Her brain can't possibly work that way, that fast. There's no way she solved that puzzle on her own. The game must be rigged.<p>> Or Burke has a gift, and she improved it with study. She practiced. She found the little edges and secrets that make large-size success possible; she did every last bit of the math. She earned her way to her place behind the wheel, and then, on that fateful day, in that particular pattern of rectangles and lights, she saw all that she needed to beat it.
My general impression is that the cryptographers routinely do stuff that's an order of magnitude more mind-blowing than this. [1]<p>More people need to read <i>The Codebreakers</i>.<p>---<p>[1] Alas, I just have to marvel, because for some reason my mind doesn't anagram well. I just don't have the knack. To me high-level Scrabble playing looks like a superpower.
Ken Jennings (the Jeopardy genius) has a blog post about this as well [1]. It seems to me once you start down the decision tree starting with "I'VE GOT" at the start, your average native English speaker should be able to get the right answer quite easily.<p>[1] <a href="http://ken-jennings.com/blog/?p=2250" rel="nofollow">http://ken-jennings.com/blog/?p=2250</a>
The Price Is Right article mentioned in this article is pretty awesome also:
<a href="http://www.esquire.com/features/impossible/price-is-right-perfect-bid-0810" rel="nofollow">http://www.esquire.com/features/impossible/price-is-right-pe...</a>
This American Life did a great show this summer which included a story about a man who figured out the pattern in the board on the 80's game show Press Your Luck and took them for a lot of money. Definitely worth a listen:<p><a href="http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/million-dollar-idea" rel="nofollow">http://www.thisamericanlife.org/radio-archives/episode/412/m...</a><p>Now that I look at the rest of that episode, it also included some coverage of the Cambridge Innovation Center's Elevator Pitch contest, so all around a good listen for the HN crowd.
No, it wasn't. I looked at the still frame for about 20 seconds and got it myself, before I saw the video.<p>It just took a little logic about what words could possibly be in certain places, and the rest was filled in by phrases I heard in the past.<p>Edit: Don't get me wrong! It took guts for her to do that. If she got it just a little wrong, she gave the next person a LOT of hints and it likely wouldn't get back to her.
Followed the embedded YouTube video and was rather disgusted by the comments on it. Almost all suggested she cheated, and half suggested it in an incredibly disgusting/demeaning/sexist way. Is this what the broader culture assumes when a woman pulls off something clever?
Apostrophes help you alot. I solved the following puzzle with no letters:<p>_ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ _ ' _<p>_ _ _ _<p>Category was "Thing".<p>(Err, formatting isn't helping. That's two words, with 9 spaces, an apostrophe and a 10th space in the first word, and four spaces in the second word).
Even discounting all of the logic involved in this instance, people <i>do</i> occasionally just get lucky.<p>When I was in the fifth grade, we were playing hangman in class and my friend Chingfei managed to discern "White Men Can't Jump" from only two or three letters. An impressive feat, proven by the fact that I remember this 14 years later.<p>A "miracle" is really something with an extremely minuscule chance of occurring, but with enough trials you'll eventually get a positive result. Even the Biblical "water into wine" could happen under the laws of quantum mechanics, but it's an insanely long shot.<p>Still, in this case it was logic, not luck, that played out, since no rational person would just guess at solving the puzzle so early in the game.
<i>I'LL HAVE WHAT SHE'S HAVING — didn't come close to fitting the puzzle, but it made I'LL seem an unlikely starting point. Because HAVE is the word that probably follows I'LL, and here, Burke was searching for a three-letter word.</i><p>Um, what?<p>I'll GET<p>I'll SEW<p>I'll AGE<p>I'll BAY<p>I'll BET<p>I'll DIG<p>I appreciate that none of these conjure memories of phrases off the top of my head, but the idea that "have" is often the only option following "I'll" is simply not true.<p>Let's face it, she's quick on her feet, smart, familiar with phrases and - most importantly - <i>got lucky</i>.
I'm pretty sure the phrase itself played a part here. Just imagine it - you've figured out something that fits using only one letter. You're probably feeling a little bit excited, but it's a bit of a gamble to guess - how many other phrases might fit? <i>Do you have a good feeling about it...?</i>
No, it's not a miracle. I've done it before without any letters on the board. Just a happy coincidence where one of the thoughts floating in your brain happens to be the clue that day.
<quote>she immediately begins breaking it down into smaller pieces — "chunks," she calls them</quote><p>I'm not sure you have to qualify that as something she calls them. I think a lot of people would call those "chunks".