> I just kept doing multiple passes through it, each time I noticed one of my answers contradicted one of the others, I would make adjustments to harmonize, which indirectly refined my understanding.

I used to do something somewhat related during exams: I could never find contradictions/mistakes while working forwards, because somehow my brain would make the same mistakes consistently every time I go through something in the same direction, no matter how slowly and methodically I would do it.

So I worked as fast as possible in the forward pass and then reversed the problem in my head and worked backwards just as fast. Except this time I would often find the expected inputs would no longer match the actual inputs, so it helped me identify a lot of mistakes.