Such problem-solving skills should be testable, although I don't know whether most or any current IQ tests would test for them. What you describe seems to be a particular type of skill that I'm good at, holding a large amount of problem-domain and other knowledge in one's head and making connections.
Great explanation. I think its also called constructive imagination. I like the more romantic "Lucid Dream shaping" as another term for it.
I also like Boyd's essay on creativity.
http://www.thecepblog.com/2009/02/09/destruction-and-creation-by-john-r-boyd/To comprehend and cope with our environment we develop mental patterns or concepts of meaning. The purpose of this paper is to sketch out how we destroy and create these patterns to permit us to both shape and be shaped by a changing environment. In this sense, the discussion also literally shows why we cannot avoid this kind of activity if we intend to survive on our own terms. The activity is dialectic in nature generating both disorder and order that emerges as a changing and expanding universe of mental concepts matched to a changing and expanding universe of observed reality. - John R. Boyd.
