In real crises, the pattern holds. During Apollo 13, NASA prioritized a power-down sequence and reentry constraints over peripheral optimizations—choosing the few life-or-death decisions that would bring the crew home (Lovell and Kluger, “Lost Moon,” 1994). Likewise, at Bletchley Park, Turing’s focus on “cribs” and bombe design targeted the bottleneck in Enigma decryption rather than every cryptanalytic avenue (Hodges, “Alan Turing: The Enigma,” 1983). The takeaway is consistent: find the linchpin, and the rest follows. [...]
