Monologue or dialogue
The most difficult questions used in the interview require you to explain your approach to solving the problem and then give the right or appropriate answer. It is necessary to decide whether this issue requires a monologue or dialogue. Logic puzzles usually mean a monologue. You are deliberately given a limited amount of information and expect that you yourself will find the answer. In this case, it is difficult for you to obtain additional information from the interviewer, since it was not intentionally given to you.
In many cases, when questions are asked about designing and analyzing cases (specific situations), interviewers expect you to ask for more information. You will be lowered if you do not. For design questions (“Design a Spice Shelf Design”) there isn’t the only right answer. Smart candidates realize that design is a difficult sequence of compromises.
The interviewer pays attention to whether you are thinking about who will use this shelf and where exactly it will be located. He is ready to answer, and as a result you will receive a lot of important additional information. Such a conversation can go on for a long time.
Some “open questions” (“Which of the fifty US states would you abolish?”) Are similar to the Rorschach spots that are used in psychological projective tests - people look at these spots and everyone sees something different in them. Open-ended questions are intentionally unstructured. For all types of questions, but especially for these, the purpose of the question is to start a half-hour conversation. The conclusion about how smart this person is is based on this conversation. A good plan would be to assume that you need a dialogue with the interviewer, unless it is obvious to you that this question is an ordinary logical puzzle. By dialogue, I mean that you will probably speak mostly, but you can also ask smart questions to the interviewer.
First thought wrong
When it comes to puzzles and riddles, the first potential answer that comes to the mind of an intelligent person is usually the wrong answer. If this were not so, this question should not be called a puzzle. Like optical illusions, or tricks of magicians, or tricks of scammers, puzzles are designed to be confused by your own familiar everyday experience. Children are the most skeptical and difficult audience for magicians, people with some brain damage are not subject to optical illusions, and scammers are not able to cheat an absolutely honest person. The fact that you cannot solve the puzzle “on the fly” just means that your brain is functioning normally, and it should be when you solve them. Many people become nervous if the answer does not come to their mind immediately. The best way to start a dialogue that is expected of you is to explain why the “obvious” solution is wrong. This will not only allow you to break the silence, but also serve as an excellent means to understand what the problem is.
Forget about the integrals
This applies, of course, only to logical puzzles. None of the tasks common in corporate interviews will require knowledge of the integrals. If you think that to solve the puzzle you need more extensive knowledge than those possessed by participants in television shows, such as “Happy Event” and others like it, in some areas that are not directly related to the area where you would like to work , - most likely, you are mistaken. There is a type of tasks that, at first glance, require knowledge of integral notation, but in fact they have a simple solution. Always try to give a simple answer. Even if you find a solution with the help of higher mathematics, you can get a low rating, because "you can’t see the forest behind the trees."
Search for complex answers
For questions with a simple wording in just one sentence - for example, “Why do the right and left swap in the mirror?” Or “Why do beer cans narrow up and down?” Often require long and complex answers. Take care to think through these issues well. You may receive a low rating if the interviewer decides that you have missed something important in your answer. If a short question is asked about design or testing (“Design the design of the toilet room for Bill Gates”; “How would you test an elevator?”), This often means that you should ask for more information from the interviewer.
"Perfectly logical creatures" are not like humans
In many logical puzzles we are talking about "perfectly logical creatures" (BLS). An example is the problem of adultery in a village or of pirates who need to share gold coins. “Perfectly logical” is a code word that is clear to puzzle lovers, but incomprehensible to those who are not in their circle. If you hear such a passphrase, it means that in solving this problem you need to forget almost everything that you know about human psychology. You need to adhere to the following assumptions: BLS has a very simple one-dimensional motivation, they are only concerned with getting as much money as possible, running away from the demon, strictly following some stupid law, etc.
Everything else does not matter to them. Therefore, WLANs never provide friendly services - each of them is for itself. BLS is never distracted, never makes mistakes, never forgets anything.
The actions of ordinary people are always characterized by uncertainty. This means that the implied solution to the puzzles in which the BLS operate is completely unrealistic. They are usually formulated as follows: A concludes that B will conclude that C will conclude that D ... etc. This will never happen in the real world. You can use this as a hint. When you hear about perfectly logical creatures, the decision almost always implies the WLAN reasoning about other WLANs (or should you talk like that about yourself when solving problems that ask the question: “What will you do in such a situation?”).
List hypotheses
Think about what happens if you consecutively reject these assumptions. In the most cunning and complex puzzles, incorrect assumptions and assumptions may look so natural that you are unlikely to even think of them as assumptions. Still worth a try. Browse through the list and assume for each of them that the opposite is true. Does this solve the problem? If you are lucky, you will see that there is such an assumption that if you refuse it, the task will be solved. Even if this does not help you and you do not solve the problem, the opinion of the interviewer about you will improve. He will see that you understand the role of changing the wording of the problem in solving problems.
No details needed
Almost always, what we call logical puzzles uses the same trick, namely: most people cannot find a solution, because they believe that they lack information for this. If the puzzle is a disjunction, you don’t know what to choose, one or the other, and you don’t know how to find a solution, you need to be prepared to systematically think through all the possible options and consequences. Suppose option X is correct - what conclusions can you draw? Suppose this is Y — what conclusions can be drawn in this case? You will almost always find that this way of reasoning will help to break the deadlock, and it turns out that you do not need the same “missing information” to solve the problem. Think of it this way: if the bridge is blown up, you will have to cross the river. Fortunately, you will never need to sail for a very long time (after all, bridges are usually built in the narrowest places of rivers).
Find a non-trivial answer
This is especially important when answering open questions for which there are no “right answers”. Interviewers listened to the usual answers to these questions many times. When Spolsky asked one of the Microsoft job candidates to design a shelf for spices for a blind person, this candidate decided that it would be more convenient for a blind person not to have a shelf for spices located at the chest or face level, but a drawer for spices at the waist level. He believed that instead of looking for a shelf with spices to the touch, and then, raising his hand, trying to read the text written in Braille, it is much more convenient to go to the kitchen table, find the drawer you need, slide it out and calmly read the inscriptions on the lids of the jars with spices sliding on them with your fingers. Such an ergonomic solution, none of the candidates had previously proposed.
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