I wonder, is being able to see a leetcode problem that relies on a generalization of merge sort to solve, never having learned merge sort, and coming up with a

I wonder, is being able to see a leetcode problem that relies on a generalization of merge sort to solve, never having learned merge sort, and coming up with a merge sorting approach the kind of person who can be a programmer. Does this person even exist(like how many people in the world have that strong of abstract reasoning skills to be able to pull that off).