My brilliant solution would have been what they eventually started to use - more effective use of the “rolling barrage” tactic.
Most of the armies eventually developed assault, shock or storm troops using infiltration tactics that were capable of breaking through trench lines. Artillery didn’t play an enormous role, certainly not the utterly decisive one people expected it to in the early years of the war.
The other factor that broke up trench warfare was the tank.
My point was simply that those who criticize WWI generals usually don’t provide much in the way of alternatives. It’s easy to criticize generals for not knowing how to break a stalemate. It’s harder to actually figure out how to do it yourself.
Recently read a good bit about Emory Upton, a Union soldier who developed a massed assault method that worked remarkably well, as at Spotsylvania, but as with most Army of the Potomac sucesses failed due to a weird inability to follow up success.
Of course, Upton didn’t have to face machine guns, or much in the way of mines, either of which would have pretty well put paid to his idea. Or even barbed wire.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Emory_Upton