I was telling someone about the safe cracking "algorithm" he had. Sometimes a problem seems hard until you recognize special pieces of information that dramatically change the constraints. In the case of the safe, he realized that the precision of a safe was to the closest multiple of 5, which reduced the set of combinations from 216,000 to 1,728) and then later that certain combinations are far more common than others (e.g. the default combo). It makes you realize that real brilliance is generally in understanding the problem and its constraints, not in solving it.