This is what I can't understand about hiring interviews, and I thank 1/2 of my interviews haven't involved such trickery. Sure - it's "easy" to say "Oh you've solved this great puzzle, you'd be perfect since you are smart on your feet", but you can be great at writing UI's, but struggle on the backend.

This culture needs to end. I don't spend my time at work solving puzzles, I spend time at work meeting with stakeholders, organizing meetings, discussing options and timelines. I spend my time coding and iterating, not wasting my time at puzzles.

I hate puzzles, because I like to do work that actually produces results (and isn't a measure of how smart one might be). Puzzles are a waste of time in my opinion, a much better proof of pudding would be a programming portfolio of things you've written (ie. Github).