I seem to recall the story of a comp sci professor keeping a teddy bear (or maybe another stuffed animal) outside his office. Before any student could ask him

I seem to recall the story of a comp sci professor keeping a teddy bear (or maybe another stuffed animal) outside his office. Before any student could ask him about a difficult problem they were having, they had to ask the teddy bear about that problem. This supposedly saved him some time by triggering this exact phenomenon for his students.