My favorite example of this was being extremely stupid and doing the Makasura Shrine "An Upright Device" in the worst way possible: I went toward Kakariko
very early, so much so that it was before I understood that you activated all Zonai devices by hitting them and it was my first time encountering the Zonai Heads.
This is how you're supposed to solve it for reference:
So anyway, I (somehow?) didn't realize that the game gives you both active and inactive Zonai Heads and assumes you'll figure out that you need to hit them to activate them. I didn't grasp that yet, so I got to the part at the end using only fuse to use the already-activated Heads to solve the puzzles. But then I was stumped about how to cross the last final large gap - I screwed around with various ideas for probably 45 minutes and painstakingly moved every single item not nailed down in the entire shrine to that final gap, but even if you chain them all together it's not long enough to make a bridge to cross the gap. So I came up with my dumb solution: Chain them together
vertically by using one of the already active Heads at the bottom to keep them vertical, then use the little lips in some of the L-shaped platforms to stop and rest and regain stamina periodically. I worked my way higher and higher until I was at the top of my makeshift tower, and then was
just high enough that I could paraglide over to the exit.
A massive waste of time and effort to solve a completely non-existent problem
. But The fact that I could make it work despite not doing
anything as intended is pretty cool!