One of the cool teacher tricks you eventually figure out is how much time to give after asking a question. Beginner teachers always jump in too early—it seems easy to the people who already know the answer :P Sometimes you even have to add on some extra time for people to realize that this is one of those questions where they actually have to think. It can get uncomfortable for you, the questioner, but that’s okay, you just have to not crack first.
Not sure how well this generalizes to puzzles. One useful tip is that there’s an intermediate level of help, where you basically just ask questions to make the other person walk through their thought process out loud. “What have you done so far?” are the most common first words out of my mouth when someone asks for help.
One of the cool teacher tricks you eventually figure out is how much time to give after asking a question. Beginner teachers always jump in too early—it seems easy to the people who already know the answer :P Sometimes you even have to add on some extra time for people to realize that this is one of those questions where they actually have to think. It can get uncomfortable for you, the questioner, but that’s okay, you just have to not crack first.
Not sure how well this generalizes to puzzles. One useful tip is that there’s an intermediate level of help, where you basically just ask questions to make the other person walk through their thought process out loud. “What have you done so far?” are the most common first words out of my mouth when someone asks for help.
Followed by “What do you think you could do next?”