The louse poem is very funny - Burns is in church sitting behind a posh lady watching a louse crawl unbeknownst to her over her bonnet.
And by strange chance today was the day I started reading an article by Kono Rin on how to solve tsumego, and got a louse laugh squared.
Kono said the three important things to do are:
1. Apply your intuition (i.e. your immediate reaction to what you see)
2. Validate and check (hard to put in English but it means something like check your intuitive candidate moves externally and internally, not just seeing that a variation line can flow smoothly but that you haven't overlooked things like a spare liberty).
3. Search thoroughly.
It is the last bit of advice that made me laugh. The Japanese phrase he used for "thoroughly" was shiramitsubushi - as if crushing lice.
I honestly think that if you can keep the image of crushing lice in your head as you check your solutions, you can keep going longer and with more focus! Whether you sleep soundly after that I another matter... Don't let the bedbugs bite!
To a Louse is the poem that gave us the immortal lines:
Less well known is the following line, especially relevant here:O wad some Power the giftie gie us
To see oursels as ithers see us!
It wad frae mony a blunder free us,
Do tell!
