Yeah, that's actually why I think it's important to point out who made the insight. Every time I've heard the anecdote, it's been presented as some sort of clever observation that we should all be expected to produce.
But, really, it's a clever observation that was made by a historically great statistician. And the anecdote leaves out the fact that he had probably been thinking about this problem before --- he was working as part of the war effort. So it was probably harder than it looks.