I used to think that I was pretty good at puzzles like this.
That is, until I met a girl that just simply aced them, one after the other, and in record time at that.
It's the first time that I ran into very solid proof that brains definitely are not created equal, I've never met anybody in my life that even came close to that level of problem solving ability. It's akin to the difference between a chess grand-master and someone that just plays a half decent game of chess, some people operate on a different plane altogether, they are so good at attacking a problem in parallel from all sides at once that what seems confounding to one person is a walk in the park for them.
If you solve the second puzzle in 5 seconds or so because you simply 'see' the solution then you fall in to that group, consider yourself a very lucky person, I wonder how rare such talent really is.
I was thinking "eh, just like my brother used to", so I told him the problems and he solved both in about 5 mins (although the first one the same way I did, it seems trivial if you can ybpx gur fnzr fnsr jvgu obgu ybpxf ng gur fnzr gvzr but also seems slightly wrong)
That is, until I met a girl that just simply aced them, one after the other, and in record time at that.
It's the first time that I ran into very solid proof that brains definitely are not created equal, I've never met anybody in my life that even came close to that level of problem solving ability. It's akin to the difference between a chess grand-master and someone that just plays a half decent game of chess, some people operate on a different plane altogether, they are so good at attacking a problem in parallel from all sides at once that what seems confounding to one person is a walk in the park for them.
If you solve the second puzzle in 5 seconds or so because you simply 'see' the solution then you fall in to that group, consider yourself a very lucky person, I wonder how rare such talent really is.