Comment by Grimm1

I partially judge the novelty of the problem I'm solving by the level of access to information about it I have. You realize you're on the edge of knowledge when you're deep down in the research papers and there's only a couple papers on the subject and you implement from there. The solutions you come up with from that tend to be the most rewarding and unfortunately relative to all the mundane work few and far between. I think I run into that type of problem a few times a year, if even.