> It's an intuition you build pretty early on in science courses in undergrad

I think this intuition is much harder to reach than many think, which causes the frequent over confidence [0]

  > It's why the optimal packing of 11 squares is so unsatisfying.

Idk, maybe one of those "beauty is in the eye of the beholder" kinda things?[1]

[0] https://m.youtube.com/watch?v=hV41QEKiMlM

[1] https://pingyou.com/papers/eleven-squares.pdf