And the point of this process? Ideas can become fixed in our minds – they become parts of a linear sequence. They get stuck in one place. Often it’s the sensible place – we don’t go to the garage with the idea of getting a filling in a tooth repaired or to a travel agent to buy a loaf of bread – but difficult investigations require a different sort of thinking. Sometimes people call it outside the box, others call it left field: Smith thought of it as shuffling the pack and laying out the cards in an almost Tarot-like fashion. Sometimes there’s an odd conjunction, flint against metal, which
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