Ahhh! Now I know what this style of interview is called! Thanks for explaining what the heck was going on in some of the interviews I went through in the last few years. Since 2005 spent a long time at 2 companies and then went self-employed 6 years ago. When getting back into full-time employment around 2019, I had a couple really weird interviews where they gave me some intense timed puzzle solving "games", and then brushed me off. I was so confused because it had no relevance to any of the web development work I had done, ever, in my years of career experience, and it was super stressful.

I thought these hiring managers were insane. I get it now. I think code tests are fine, but timed puzzles just don't tell anyone much about any dev's ability to assemble features out of higher-level tools.