One thing I started to notice when I was young that older, wiser, more experienced people were very good at "buying time" in situations like this by asking some

One thing I started to notice when I was young that older, wiser, more experienced people were very good at "buying time" in situations like this by asking somebody to repeat and clarify what it was they were asking for. Rather than provide a solution, they would go through a precise definition of exactly what was being asked - and a lot of the time, while defining the problem, the asker would end up providing a solution.