I am a fan of the NPR show Car Talk and they have a weekly puzzler for listeners to solve. I found this to be a great "Mind Gym" exercise for solving issues that have many combinations.
For the last couple of weeks, they have had a great puzzler that I almost solved but is worthy of engineers to attempt and to consider. Linked below is the text of the puzzle
http://www.cartalk.com/content/prison-switcharoo-0?question
You can figure if you would solve the issue and send your friend to freedom or to be fed to the alligators.
In programming, we find our proposed solutions focusing upon numbers and information that become, or are, irrelevant to the actual solution. As the Car Talk host suggested, a group of students were fixed upon the number 23 as being prime. Yet, the number 23 only diverts attention from the solution. This mind gym exercise can help us to examine how we look at other problems in the workplace (i.e. is our focus correct, are we over-analyzing the facts, and what is truly the objective of our projects.) Remember, the objective here is not to be fed to the alligators.
We, as programmers, could go one step further and ask how to program a calculation that solves this in your favorite language.
**The hint to figure your base case and to solve for 3 prisoners can help a bunch.
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