Think outside the box dot game

Shred the box. Bury the box, or even just kick the box really hard. That will do more to inspire someone to discard conventional thinking and try something radical. Catch up on past installments of the Jargon Jar by clicking the links below:. We make regular donations to the Jar in this recurring Bottle Talk series. We want your thoughts!

Which words and phrases offend your grammatical sensibilities? Leave us a comment below, and help us fill the jar. Have a go now and then scroll down the page to find out the solution. Do not look at the answer below until you have either given up or found a solution of your own.

Do not give up too easily! No cheating now. Please do not look at the solution until you have one yourself. Here, thinking outside the box connotes going beyond the norm. I agree with Tom Allinder above.

Most effective creative people I know work very, very hard at it. Yes, if I were presented this problem and given ample time to solve it, I would be able to come up with solutions. Then I would present it to a crowd over the course of 1 minute, and I would appear to be creative, even a genius.

My point is: any of us can do this. Nice point Christian. I always hated that nine-dot exercise, and you put the finger on why. Creativity is actually WORK. Any writer or artist knows this. If you want to have the creativity of an artist, you have to do what an artist does — as the old joke says: How do you get to Carnegie Hall? After he declined, I painted the 9 dots making sure there was enough space at the top and the bottom of the piece of paper, carefully tore a cut if this isnt correct English, Im sorry Im from Germany between the left and the middle dots starting at the top going almost all the way to the bottom of the piece of paper.

Then turned the piece of paper by degrees and did the same thing tearing the paper between the middle and the now left row of dots, starting at the top going almost all the way down. That made it pretty easy to get all the 9 dots, which were in a square he never said they would have to stay in a square with a single straight line!

Then I was made to put on a straight-jacket and only came back from a long vacation trip recently ;-. Btw, how do you define a straight line? Once im back at the start of course Id never stop drawing just slow down dramatically to have enough time I would turn the piece of paper by about 45 degrees so Im still capable of drawing the same line but connecting some other dots with the same straight line.

If I arrived at those solutions in about two minutes of playing around with the piece of paper do I need a straight jacket?? Just out of curiosity, though: How many people actually solve the problem WITHOUT being told they can draw outside the box or well how many did, when that problem was still unknown? Im afraid without getting a lot of time to think about it or being told that I can draw outside the square, I wouldnt have come up with a solution but once told I had many and could probably generate more as you can tell.

Ive also been wondering whether creativity is what makes a person appear street smart vs. Any ideas? He was actually serious about it and I bet the thought of writing down a random complicated password, typing it into the parental control software quickly and then giving the piece of paper with the password to a friend or a family member as I did is something that someone with that rather low level of creativity will probably never be able to come up with, no matter how hard he works.

This is an interesting topic to me as I have been looking for ways to be more creative for about the past year. I have often wondered if the ability to come up with novel ideas is innate or if it is learned.

Some other posters mentioned that people are able to come up with new ideas because they have experience and knowledge of a particular discipline that others do not have. Creativity is deeper than this though. It is the ability to make connections and see patterns that others cannot. I have observed some that are able to do this and not only do they tend to ask many questions — they answer smart questions.

Is creativity, then, linked to IQ? A lot of creative work does require a certain level of intelligence, but you can have a very high IQ without necessarily being very creative. When God created all things, one of the first stories is how He brought the animals to Adam to see what he would name them as recorded in the book of Genesis.

Whether or not you believe this account is not the point. It is to recognize that Adam had no frame of reference from which to come up with names. Lets use both! It looks like the Professor of Psychology — Weisberg got it all muddled up here. I challenge my assumptions, therefore creating my own box. I feel as if i have to think outside the box in which everybody else places their ides. Adding to the box that pretty much everything has been done….

My own interpretations would be Assuming the absurd Leaving your comfort zone Stepping out of your shoes. But regardless of that, your blog is fantastic. Creative thinking breaks rules and works within them. But I think rules are an important part of creative thinking. They are the pre-exisitng structures of thought that creativity reinvents.

You have to have a great respect and understanding of why conventions exist before you can throw them away and replace them with new ones. I think that a truly creative thinker looks for the underlying logic that made conventions become conventions in the first place. For example, rather than use rhyming couplets, they just saw rhymes as a way to organize raw sound and language into patterns—the same basic principle which can be done with line breaks and snytax in free verse.

The same goes for advertising. Everybody does print ads, TV spots, and websites. Creative thinking ussually just opens up habits of thought, and allow a greater efficiency by using a fresh pattern that works better. Love the blog. And thanks for the War of Art deal today, I read some and then wrote for an hour straight. I understand the argument that you are trying to make but I disagree with your interpretation of research study you cited. Yes, only a small percentage was able to solve the problem knowing that they could literally think of a solution that went outside of the box of 9 dots.

They are most likely still thinking within the acceptable structures that their experience and education had made more them, such as trying to draw lines that make familiar shapes.

It is like the farmer who gets in a rut, literally or figuartively. Then problems emerge and things grow uncomfortable to the point where you have to try smething different. Intellctualism is a wide open ball game that is challenging every time you really begin to think. How exactly this is supposed to offer any insight whatsoever into the incredibly complex human decision-making process utterly baffles me.

Why not have someone draw a cat and then improvise a meaningful commentary around their imagery? This is one of the great logical fallacies of the age; that a pat schematic must axiomatically be a truthful or relevant model for our minds, or the economy or any other vastly complicated interwoven system.

The more we learn about how these complex systems work, the more we seem to realise that neat models are hardly if ever accurate. I have solved many business problems by thinking outside the box. Once I learned to not get bogged down by the problem, instead look for the solution. Thinking outside the box expands your vision.

I was just thinking about the whole box thing yesterday while trying to stay awake at a meeting at school. Well our new plan is being forced on us by someone who never worked with those type of kids before. So, no expertise. The person is not even in the box.

I agree you need to know what the box is about before you can even think about getting out of it to think. Alternatively, we also recommend the SuperNova! Plugin for Chrome as an easy way to enable Flash content in the browser. Get more out of your Kongregate experience. Take advantage of ad-free gaming, cool profile skins, automatic beta access, and private chat with Kong Plus. Learn more ».

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