How I do that is context. Rather than starting with everything I don't understand about the question I start with whatever I do. In this case I understood the data structure, and understood that he wants to do complex sorts on it, sometimes numerically and sometimes asciibetically.

So I began to talk about how to set up complex sorts on this data structure, with different comparisons on different fields. It was not until after I finished that I realized that he meant Schwartzian transform when he said ST.