Precisely so. I consider myself to be a pretty good coder because I'm good at keeping track of many things going on at once (I used to be a chip designer in a prior life), but I'm 100% sure I'd flunk the puzzles that companies interviewing for coders throw out in their interviews.

Good to see a realization by Google that those puzzles aren't all that useful: http://qz.com/96206/google-admits-those-infamous-brainteaser...

Google might be one company where algorithmic wizardry might be expected to be more important than most, so that's saying something...