[Boomerang]

I think those are the standard approaches, which basically boils down to the philosophy of giving the player with the smartest character more information and then let the game mechanics take care of the rest. But does that really bridge the gap between average and genius?

I was hoping since this is a thread about gaming philosophy for some more unusual ideas. For instance the GM adjusts the scenario after the fact to make the clever character seem even smarter. How this might look is that the player looks for a trap in an unusual location, there is no trap according to the GM map, but the GM retcons a trap in that spot so that the player looks clever finding it. Or in reverse, there is a trap there but the player didn’t think to look so the trap is ignored by the GM, unless a different (less intelligent) character happens to wander over it first.

Or players are given more time to make decisions based on how smart their characters are, and they go in reverse order of intelligence. In other words the player with the smartest character gets to see how all the other player decisions pan out and have time to think about it, before they have to commit to their own course of action.