The 9 Dot Puzzle - Thinking out of the box

For years I used the 9 dot puzzle in my classes at Rutgers to illustrate the point that often we build limitations that we imagine come from outside. It was always an effective teaching device --- a simple example with an important message.

This week I smiled as I read the first part of Seth Godin's blog (below). But as I read on, I realized how much more was possible than what I had seen. I didn't go far enough at all.

I often say that many of the ways to improve the quality of life of people with dementia are so simple if we look at the problem differently. My photos show the power of a smile, a hug, looking someone in the eye, and listening carefully. These break the pattern of so much of what passes for the "care" of memory challenged people.

Godin's blog post about the 9 Dot Puzzle makes me wonder how much MORE we could do if we were really creative in our thinking about the problem. I remember some excellent examples I have read about or heard about ... Do you have some to share in a comment? Please ponder that and share your thoughts here after you read Seth Godin's message, repeated below. 

Appropriate cheating in the nine-dot problem

Here's a pencil. Here's a piece of copy paper with nine dots on it. Without lifting the pencil or folding the paper, connect the nine dots using four straight lines.
The narrator smiles as you try as hard as you can, unable to do it. Then he ends your frustration and points out you've been tricked by your own limits, because, of course, there's nothing in the rules that says you can't have the lines go beyond the edges of the nine dots.
The thing is, this isn't the end. This is the beginning of the cheating, and anyone who stops here, satisfied at his breakthrough, is missing the point.
Some innovators point out that because the dots and the pencil have width, it can actually be done with three lines. (Here's how). At this point, some people get uncomfortable because a lot of what we assumed (the edges of the nine dots, their magical zero width) is being challenged.
I think we can go far beyond this, though.
What revolutions do, though, is change more than a few common conceptions. If you roll the paper into a tube, with the dots on the outside, you can go round and round and round (like an Edison music cylinder) and do the entire thing with justone line. Without folding the paper.
That's cheating! (You could also burn the paper and just call it a day at zero)...
Wikipedia is that sort of solution. So, in fact, are just about all of the innovative successes of the last decade. They took an assumed rule and threw it out. People who have been online for awhile have seen this happen over and over, and yet hesitate to do it with their own problem. Not because it can't be done, but because it's not in the instructions. And the things we fear to initiate are always not in the instructions.