Definition
Plain language
Trying every possibility one by one instead of finding a clever trick.
As stated in the literature
An exhaustive-search solution whose cost grows with the full input space; often correct but too slow for large problem sizes, so it only earns credit on small-input subtasks.
Also called: brute-force
Why it matters: It is often the quickest way to get a provably correct answer on small inputs, but it stalls out on large ones, which is exactly why contests award it only partial credit.
For example, to find the two numbers in a list that add up to a target, a brute-force program simply checks every possible pair one after another.
Heard on the show
“So even before you get to the open-model RL story, there's a clean lesson in there about structured thinking beating brute-force thinking.”Episode 008 — Why Long-Horizon AI Agents Get Stuck, and a Milestone-Based Fix That Helps