"It means that there is no way to solve them deterministically in reasonable amount of time." On the contrary, the systematic method to hack these seems to be

"It means that there is no way to solve them deterministically in reasonable amount of time." On the contrary, the systematic method to hack these seems to be pattern matching and shoehorning into similar problems rather than reasoning from first principles. I'm going through a similar battle, mainly because programming interviews have annoyingly become competitive challenges lately and before adopting a strategy it was an extremely soulsucking process.