Suppose your goal is to drive to the store, but there’s no road to follow. An illustration of a heuristic would be: Head directly toward the store till you reach an obstacle you can’t cross.

Whenever you contact such an obstacle, follow it around to the right till you’re able to head toward the store again. This isn’t the most levelheaded or comprehensive heuristic, but in a lot of cases it will work just fine, and you’ll finally reach the store.

Heuristics don’t ensure you’ll find the optimum solution, nor do they broadly guarantee a resolution at all. But they do a beneficial enough job of solving particular types of problems to be of value.