xor versus and

In the recent Chess Carnival, Jack le Moine contrasted two approaches to solving problems, my solution-focused approach (goal to build up pattern recognition) and Reassembler's analysis-heavy approach (goal to build up calculation skills Kotov-style, one of a few techniques I discussed here for building up calculation skills as opposed to pattern recognition skills).

Obviously, these are not mutually exclusive methods or goals. Instead of staring for ten minutes and then quickly looking over the solution, or instead of staring for only one minute and then taking ten minutes to understand the solution, why not split the difference? Five minutes of analysis, five minutes of solution explanation.

This is what I'm doing in Circle 5.2 for the problems I can't solve right away. I didn't do this in Circle 5.1 because I wanted to get through it more quickly than previous first circles. It's an experiment: perhaps I will learn the problems even better when the two methods meet with a handshake, as demonstrated by Donald Rumsfeld and Saddam Hussein in the picture above.

What is xor? Find out here.