Ancient grammatical puzzle solved after 2,500 years

This was a fantastic read. Hadn't heard of this puzzle and intend to read more about it now. Authors did a nice job of keeping it simple so I could get it as a newbie. Congrats to the researcher!

Thank for posting this! I love this sort of content.

Pāṇini was probably the only man I would say was comparable to Einstein in intelligence.

1. Why is this on phys.org

2. Why is the writing so dramatic

> Six months before Rajpopat made his discovery, his supervisor at Cambridge, Vincenzo Vergiani, Professor of Sanskrit, gave him some prescient advice: "If the solution is complicated, you are probably wrong."

> Rajpopat said, "I had a eureka moment in Cambridge. After 9 months trying to crack this problem, I was almost ready to quit, I was getting nowhere. So I closed the books for a month and just enjoyed the summer, swimming, cycling, cooking, praying and meditating. Then, begrudgingly I went back to work, and within minutes, as I turned the pages, these patterns starting emerging, and it all started to make sense. There was a lot more work to do but I'd found the biggest part of the puzzle."

> "Over the next few weeks I was so excited, I couldn't sleep and would spend hours in the library, including in the middle of the night to check what I'd found and solve related problems. That work took another two and half years."

I (and probably every programmer (or mathematician, physicist, carpenter, or problem solver) on the planet) have felt this effect first-hand. Incredible how well the brain can collate and sift through information if you just give it the space to do so.

A related effect, when I was a time where all I did was look at a screen all day, looking up new information, I couldn't solve problems nearly as fast. Looks like I wasn't allowing the incubation period in my mind to start and continue unabated.