I have a different attitude. When someone is making obscure statements, I ask them for clarification. I don't put any stock in divining what someone means. I saw that too much at work. People working on a problem, based on what they thought their supervisor meant. I would ask them what they were doing and they would just mumble and speculate about what the supervisor would be thinking. I would go and ask the supervisor. Or, in one case, I summed up all the work that had been done and sent it off to the customer for clarification. We hadn't communicated to him for a year. He replied back, "No, that's not what I want. I want this..." It had no relationship to what everyone was speculating. After two weeks of analysis, I sent him the answer---and went off to open-heart surgery. Two months later, when I returned, I found that the customer was happy, the implemented equations worked perfectly, and the problem was solved. A complete waste of several man-years of fruitless effort, for the sake of unwillingness to get clarification from the customer.

Or, as I hinted, it was a test to see if we would put a rabbit in front of us on a pole and run after it. If we did that, it would be a flunk. Nobody ever seems to think that a proper answer could be that the "trail" is bogus. Closed minds.

Who knows what Q was talking about if he doesn't talk plainly? There is no telepathy good enough to sort it out.