I agree, but I enjoyed doing Google's semi-secret random-invite-only "Foobar" challenge, which gives you a series of coding problems with a silly story attached

I agree, but I enjoyed doing Google's semi-secret random-invite-only "Foobar" challenge, which gives you a series of coding problems with a silly story attached. I think even that very minimal structure helps mentally elevate it from a boring math problem to a "real" scenario.