Outside the Box

Psychologists coined the phrase word leap to describe how we solve a puzzle by a shift of mind, such as the experience of seeing two faces instead of that picture of a vase.

When I observed two big carton boxes of milk powder in my wife's car, I was thinking of my sister-in-law who has recently moved in with her twin babies (when her helper is on leave). Clearly this is just common sense; I'd been enjoying the babysitting those two little boys.

But hang on. The carton boxes were empty.

The carton boxes didn't have milk powder. Not any more. Instead of throwing away the used boxes at her clinic, my wife brought them home. They were meant for our daughter, not Gabriel and Joshua. The idea is for Jasmine to build whatever she likes. This appears counterintuitive to me just because I have to stop seeing the milk powder boxes as a thing other than its original purpose. This is exactly what daddies were challenged to do at my daughter's school last Friday; we were to create a slide tunnel (or whatsoever treadmill for a marble to run) out of paper, straws, dried spaghetti, scissors and tapes. Some dads had trouble with this - some kids, too.

Which reminds me a similar scenario known as the Box Problem. Imagine being supplied a candle, a book of matches and a box of tacks, and you're alone in a room with a wooden door. How can you attach the candle to the door so that you can light it, have it burn normally, and create light to read by?

You've got a lot of choices when you're facing this difficult puzzle. Melt part of the candle and use the melted wax to fix the candle to the door. Or else, tack the candle to the door. But does it work? Yes and no. They won't work too well.

It would have been better solved by emptying out the tack box, tack that to the wall, and use it to hold the candle. And then the penny dropped. Like many good ideas, it's so simple you wonder why nobody had thought of it before. Not every psychology expert agrees that it is simply a shift, or a leap, of mind to solve the problem. And, in a way, it doesn't matter very much how we arrive at the solution as long as we can think outside the (tack) box.

A postscript to the story: my daughter and her buddy constructed a hotel, train station and her primary school out of the carton boxes yesterday, and for that, I am proud of the two innovative kids.