Eleven-Dimensional Chess

One of my favorite bits in one of my favorite books involves a math genius who's drafted into the Navy at the start of World War II. As part of his induction he's given an aptitude test that involves some superficial algebra questions along the lines of “if the river is a mile wide and is flowing at a rate of 10 miles an hour, and a boat crosses the river at a rate of 4 miles an hour, how much further downriver will the boat be from its starting point when it gets to the other side?” Our hero, however, figures the Navy would never ask such a mathematically superficial question, so he starts doing calculus to determine the impact of the friction of the river bed on the flow of the river at each point across its width so as to accurately determine the river’s impact on the boat. 

It’s been awhile since I’ve read the book, but if I recall correctly, his experience with the test gets our guy a publication in a mathematics journal -- and an assignment to the marching band because the Navy thinks he's a moron. 

I'm not sure it was exactly the point the author was trying to make, but that chunk of it always made me think about the questions that underlie the questions. What assumptions do you have to hold if you're going to get to the "right" answer? Is this simple question actually simple, or is it complicated? Is this complicated question really complicated, or is it simple? 

In other words, do you (really) need to play eleven-dimensional chess to answer the question?  

Sadly, cancer seems to promote the need for eleven-dimensional chess.