Getting around having to solve the hard parts of a problem entirely and still getting to the correct solution is what I'd generally consider an intelligent approach. 

Sure, it might feel a lot less satisfying than actually figuring out all the details, but it is goal-oriented and I'd say goal-oriented thinking is very encouraged on a "time-limited you only have one try to get it right"- problem. 

I suppose this actually raises the question which shortcuts are allowed and which are likely to cause issues later if not figured out at the start since there were ways around having to do that.

Either way, I interpret the existence of a tight time span as: "You don't get to figure out every detail of this problem."

My takeaway is that the metaphorical style points only start mattering AFTER you have any valid solution at all. 

Yes, you are mostly quite right that this is starting from a place which isn't ideal, however as you pointed out, as long as we consider sentience the basis of moral worth, we really would rather have a way of figuring it out than not. Of course people could just decide they don't actually care about sentience at all and thus avoid having to deal with this issue entirely, but otherwisely it seems quite important. However, I would not agree by default that "defining some measurable parts to use that knowledge somehow" as you put it is meaningless. It would still measure the defined characteristics, which is still useful knowledge to have - especially in the absense of any better knowledge at all. It is not ideal, I will give you that, but until we sufficiently reverse-engineered the nature of sentience, it might be as good as we can do. And yes, worst case, we learn that the characteristics we measured are not actually meaningful.Getting that realization in itself does not seem without meaning to me either. Thank you for your feedback.