I definitely miss something.
The obvious move doesn’t work, obviously.
The less-than-obvious moves don’t work either.
I must be missing a move.
Except that there are about five possible moves around, so I can’t really skip one of them.
Check the solution:
- it was one of them! But I couldn’t figure why it works. Or…
- no, wait! There’s a sixth move I didn’t consider!
I must have a wrong approach.
There must be some clear and rational way for checking possible solutions until you find the right one.
I’m not talking about Utaro Hashimoto or some crazy stuff like that.
I’m talking about something like this:
Situation is clear. Goal is clear. Area for solution is clear: it’s less than six intersections.
But I couldn’t even imagine that first move.
I just didn’t even take that into account.
A sequence of three moves and it’s done!
(Well, actually you need a bunch of other moves to check that the solution works)
So, is there some sort of algorithm to solve tsumego? Something that peacefully leads me around my flawed intuition and takes me to the unintuitive (for me) solution?
It can’t be just experience, bumping your head against shapes until you start to recognize them.
That can’t be the answer, can it?
Any suggestions?
I’d really appreciate that.