I find that trying to simplify the problem as much as possible in as few lines of example code as possible accomplishes 3 things:

(1) I often arrive at the solution before I even have to ask someone else,

(2) It forces me to find the crux of the problem and identify exactly what it is that I'm analyzing, and

(3) It boils the problem down into a simple enough scenario that I can post both the question and a very simple snippet of code that others can easily understand.

Hope this helps!