Possibly they should not in fact attempt to collaborate on this either right now, but once you've tried accounting for the very obvious regularities in magical interaction that are apparent in any spellcasting, the thing she would try, if she were building the thing he'd try to build, is to look at apparent irregularities, places that feel like they violate the intuitive rules that every wizard learns for the behavior of magic, and figure out what's actually going on in those cases. Which is what she's trying.

Possibly they should not in fact attempt to collaborate on this either right now, but once you've tried accounting for the very obvious regularities in magical interaction that are apparent in any spellcasting, the thing she would try, if she were building the thing he's trying to build, is to look at apparent irregularities, places that feel like they violate the intuitive rules that every wizard learns for the behavior of magic, and figure out what's actually going on in those cases. Which is what she's trying.