I like the question and it has been well answered. However is it appropriate to pose "This is how you shouldn't do it" puzzles for beginners?

It is much easier to figure out how to paint an elephant by seeing a good painting of an elephant than by seeing a whole pile of paintings of shadows of different parts of an elephant.

Show your beginners good code and good technique. Keep them in the middle of the stream where the water is smooth and easy to negotiate. Save the rapids for later on when they can handle things a little.

It is more cool to answer questions clearly than it is to try and be an obscure guru. A guru who can answer the most obscure questions in a clear fashion posesses much more fu than one who draws cryptic shadow drawings in the sand.

If you need some help or would like your questions checked out by others, it wouldn't hurt at all to post a meditation as an RFC (request for comment). If it is a good set of questions (and by the time the monks have pored over it, it will be), it may even enter into the tutorial materials as a resource for others to use.