Solve The Actual Problem

Spontaneous Judges are often surprised when teams lose track of, forget, or never really understood the problem and its scoring, especially in hands-on problems.

Like Long-Term problems, Spontaneous Hands-On problems have specific scoring rules that are not apparent from a general understanding of the basic intent of the problem.  For example:

• You might be asked to construct three similar things and get scored differently on each -- perhaps building one would yield a higher score
• You might be asked to construct three similar things, yet get a minimum score for each -- perhaps almost anything would give you a much better score that nothing
• You might be asked to put items in multiple containers, yet only get scored for the first two in each container

Knowing the rules of a problem helps you create a strategy for increasing your score.

Not Knowing the rules may result in costly omissions or deductions.

Some teams choose a specific member to be responsible for reviewing the rules during Hands-On problem, listening to the plans of the other team members, suggesting when their plans may not fit the rules, or suggesting strategies that will take advantage of the rules.

What works for one team, may not work for another.  What works in one type of Hands-On problem may not work in another...

If You Could Think During Think Time What Do You Think You Could Think About?

Brainstorm the following topics with your team:

1) What could a person think about, and how could they think about it, in order to be even more successful in a Spontaneous Problem.

2) How could we practice Think Time in a way that we could help each others be great Think Time Thinkers?