A really good book. It is captivating to read and the world is vast. He is op but at the same time not because he is a frog in the well and needs many resources. Give it a read!
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LIKE(Comment from 'Xylos144', and 'Sam Fleming' reply below his comment for technique/tips idea to write smart character and smart moment) + Two main things I find helpful: 1.Smart people arrive at a good answer to a problem quickly. You're writing the book, you can figure out how you want a problem to be solved, (and even tweak the problem to make it solvable) in a really great way, but you have all the time in the world to craft that solution. 2. Smart people are insightful. They can figure out or guess at answers when they have very limited or incomplete information. But you're the writer! You know EVERYTHING. So it's easy for your character to know things - you just need to justify them figuring it out. And it's much easier to work backwards from the answer to think up clues that could lead to the answer, than to arrive at the answer given just the clues. It's a P vs NP problem, or a problem of non-reversible operations. A general notion in mathematics is that there are some kinds of problems that are really hard or impossible to solve, but really easy to check if the answer is right. In many cases the solution to an NP the problem is just systematically guessing and checking until you find an answer that's right. A P type problem might be: I ordered a $5.29 sandwich, a $1.79 Drink, and a $0.99 cookie. How much did lunch cost? Easy, simple, $8.07. Straight arithmetic. An NP problem might be: Here is a menu of 10 differently prices items that cost $1.73, $1.87, $3.50, $2.23, $14.01, $5.67, $6.11, .... and $0.33. What combination of items will cost $13.53? You might be able to find patterns to help you rule out some possibilities quickly, like crossing off the entree that costs over $14.00 But fundamentally you're just going to have to repeatedly combine a bunch of items together that look like they're close to the total amount, and then add them up and see if the total matches exactly. Potentially for dozens or even hundreds of combinations until you find the (a) correct one. You can see how this concept extends easily to non-mathematical problems as well. It's easy to recognize - for everyone - if a proposed solution is good and will work and fits the situation, but it's hard to actually come up with that idea just given the situation. You'll probably have to think of a whole bunch of responses and model them in your head and think them through and determine if that will work one by one until you stumble on something without any glaring flaws. But if you're the one writing the problem... you can just decide that you want the winning combination to be a Medium burger, large fries, a small drink, two cookies, and a bag of chips, total those prices together, and then use their sum of $13.53 to pose the question. To use a different metaphor... you just write out the full Sudoko solution arbitrarily, and then erase most of the numbers. You know the solution is there, you know it's achievable, but you don't actually have to solve the puzzle you've just created. And thus you don't need to be as smart as the person solving the puzzle to write out the puzzle being solved. + When you have decided the solution your smart character will come up with and then do some mixing up in order to make it less than obvious, one danger is to accidentally make another possible solution. That's not too bad itself but it may be too obvious (that it's jarring why the less smart characters didn't see that one), or worse, much better than the one you have pre-decided. Also Decision Trees tool are lifesavers for this case (there are more good comment in this video, especially the reply below that guy I mentioned at the top) ||