Navrang!

A couple of weeks back, on one fine Monday evening, Dr. Prasad walked into the class, as usual with his bag. Oh yes! I am talking about the same magician, Prof. Mandi. He has marketed his brand so efficiently that it has become his identity. Nonetheless, after exchange of few pleasantries, he opened his magic bag and took out a Navrang Cube.

He also added a twist  to it and disassembled the cube. Actually it was a Navrang Cube made out of different 27 cubes of 9 colors. While many were already engrossed in making an effective strategy to solve the puzzle, Prof. Mandi added another twist by putting up a condition that it has to arranged in such a manner that there is no repetition of any color on each face of the cube. Precisely, each face of the cube should contain all the 9 colors and absolutely no repetition of colors.

With a challenge in hand, few of us volunteered to solve it in front of the class, but no one succeeded. Dr. Prasad today was actually critical and ridiculed us for being unorganized and having no logical approach for the task in hand, one of the major flaw in today's beggar generation. Then he went on to teach us the importance of being organized and having a strategy to solve any task. he took the opportunity of solving the challenge himself demonstrating the power of being organized.

He gave us a structured approach of forming teams of 2 where 1 person was guiding while the other person was forming the cube. He gave us a logical approach and the entire exercise was repeated by 3 different teams in 3 different languages. It was indeed a great learning experience for us all.

The following video by my colleague Himadri and I demonstrate how exactly we go about solving the Navrang Cube.

Puzzle Unearthed!

The final post, my Digital CV follows! Hope this series was a learning curve for you as it was for me.

Digital CV

Presenting before you, my digital resume for the post of Manager in your firm.

Creative Problem Solving

Whenever we do work problems are bound to come. Problems can be solved in two ways. First is a complicated way and the other is a simple way. Complex solutions are undesirable and they are the ones we mostly get. But simple solutions are the most creative ones. It takes us to think creatively. This is creative thinking.
             
Here I would like to recall to you a simple story of a pen. Once the astronauts were faced with a problem of how to write in 0 gravity in space, because ink flows down into the nib due to gravity only which will be absent in space. To address this situation United States developed a pen which would work in 0 gravity spending millions of dollars. At the same time Russian scientists solved the problem by writing with pencil. This how a problem is made or solved in a simple way or complex way.

CREATIVE PROBLEM SOLVING PROCESS

What is Creative Problem Solving?

Creative problem solving is a form of deliberate creativity: a structured process for solving problems or finding opportunities, used when you want to go beyond conventional thinking and arrive at creative (novel and useful) solutions.

Lord of the Rings..

Recently Prasad Sir introduced us to a strange looking contraption hanging from the ceiling on the Teacher's Terrace, and we were supposed to identify the problem and then solve it.

Often during the course of life a lot of problems present themselves, and then not so often there are problems that really test us. We normally solve these problem through our experience and judgement and move on to the next one in line, 'coz believe it or not, there IS a line, whether we see it or not. So in a sense we all are managers by birth. But a true manager is one who can not only solve the problem presented to him, but can also identify the problem that might not be so obvious, or even anticipate the problem before it comes into being.
I believe that is the sole purpose of the course I am going through here.

Anyways, back to the interesting puzzle. We were asked to go to the terrace and asked to look around and, no prizes for guessing, people had already noticed the hanging wooden toy from a distance.

To remove the ring:
• Raise the ring as high as it would go and hold it there.
• Move one of the wooden squares to the other side by passing it through the slit in the top part.
• Bring both the squares together by moving the thread.
• One of the balls will still remain stuck after its square block is taken to other side.
• Lower the ring, tilt it and remove through the slit and the ball.\

To assemble the Ring:
• Pass the ring through the slit back onto the square                                  
• Raise the ring as high as possible.
• Pass one of the wooden squares through the slit and to it's correct side.

So it can be said that it's not only important to be a good problem solver, but an excellent analyzer as well.

Solve me, I dare you!