Before revision:  We argue that  solution of RATs can be interpreted as a first passage search problem on a free association network and study a variety of different search algorithms. We demonstate that in easy RATs (those solved by more than 64 \% subjects in 15 seconds) there are strong links directly connecting stimuli and response, and thus an efficient strategy consist in activating these direct links.
After revision:  We argue that solution of RATs can be interpreted as a first passage search problem on a network whose vertices are words and links are associations between words. We propose different heuristic search algorithms and demonstrate that in "easily-solving" RATs (those solved by more than 64 \% subjects in 15 seconds) there are strong links directly connecting stimuli and response, and thus an efficient strategy consist in activating these direct links.