Comment by ruedaminute

I dunno, a lot of these things are brain teasers and not useful in our everyday programming lives as you say. Brain teasers can strengthen your brain and thus make you a better programmer, but rarely will you be able to apply the learnings from those brain teasers to common problems. I think I'll tease my brain just enough to be more productive, not just so that I can "feel" like a better programmer...