Might Jason Kottke be the New (Hints by) Heloise?
It doesn't seem to me that I've ever had the problem discussed in Jason Kottke's humorous roundup of pop-science approaches to coping with unfamiliar menus. But I will say that the Blink method works for me when it comes to choosing a DVD to watch. I have found this out the hard way, totting up the minutes wasted looking for "something else, maybe" but always coming back to the spine that first caught my eye.
