Programmer's conundrums

In article <200604032326.k33NQAGu023032 at mwave.heeltoe.com>, Brad Parker <brad at heeltoe.com> writes: True, but even from that perspective I find this sort of brain teaser activity irrelevant to software engineering skills. Good software engineering isn't brain teaser activity. Its methodical analysis and deductive reasoning. Yes, brain teasers involve deductive reasoning as well but since most of them hinge on a "trick" and not a simple backwards analysis of the data to find the root cause of the failure (like most debugging sessions), I don't find them useful indicators of software engineering ability. That's what I'm calling into question -- that these brain teaser questions somehow yield insight into the software engineering abilities of the interviewee. I say this as someone that is pretty crappy at brain teasers yet my coworkers and managers have consistently rated my software engineering and debugging skills on the high end of the range. What is the evidence that these questions have predictive value for software engineers? -- "The Direct3D Graphics Pipeline"-- code samples, sample chapter, FAQ: <http://www.xmission.com/~legalize/book/> Pilgrimage: Utah's annual demoparty <http://pilgrimage.scene.org>