When Henry and I had had to work out a really sticky problem together, neither of us was allowed to mention it. No bursting out with ‘Say, I’ve got an idea! What do you think of this? . . .’ It was not allowed, because the thing had not matured enough, and putting forth an idea that was not worked out in detail wasted the other’s time and kept him from letting it ‘ripen’. Only that evening or the next morning would we talk about possible solutions. By then, the ground had been gone over in detail, and all we had to do was get to work without groping, by the shortest path.
