UK's Globe and Mail website has an article dating back to 2012 on the origins of the phrase "use you noodle". Interestingly, the article also cites the use of "noodle" as a verb for free-form creativity, or to noodle around:
"To noodle around on something, while it does make use of the noodle (head), may derive from the regional German nudeln, to improvise a song, or from the late-19th-century Scottish sense of noodling as humming a song to oneself. By 1937, to noodle was to fool around with notes to create music. By 1942, perhaps by association with the doodle (a loose, free-associating drawing), it acquired the broader sense of messing about with words or ideas without a clear goal."
