Surely You're Joking, Mr. Feynman!: Adventures of a Curious Character

“He fixes radios by thinking!”

This line is spoken by a man who hires young Feynman and labels him a kind of genius. Feynman is not especially good with his hands. Rather, he can think through and identify problems before he begins manual work.

“That’s a puzzle drive. It’s what accounts for my wanting to decipher Mayan hieroglyphics, for trying to open safes. I remember in high school, during first period a guy would come up to me with a puzzle in geometry […] I wouldn’t stop until I figured the damn thing out.”

Feynman foreshadows anecdotes he will recount later by describing his interest in puzzles even in his youth. Feynman finds pleasure in working logically on puzzles and problems until he finds satisfactory solutions.

“Another thing I did in high school was to invent problems and theorems. I mean, if I were doing any mathematical thing at all, I would find some practical example for which it would be useful.”

Feynman frequently emphasizes concrete examples in his thinking and attributes this habit to how he learned to learn as a young man. He demonstrates his practice of connecting practical examples and abstract theorems.