ABSTRACT
It sounds silly, but many otherwise-very-smart people, given a puzzle with numbers in it, treat those numbers as if underlined in a sacred text. This is math—you’re allowed to change the numbers and see what happens! If the numbers in a puzzle are dauntingly large, replace them with small ones. How small? As small as possible, without making the puzzle trivial; if that doesn’t give you enough insight, make them gradually bigger.
