On the other hand, much to my childhood self's chagrin, even when opening a fresh set and not mixing it with other Legos, there are still quite a large number o

On the other hand, much to my childhood self's chagrin, even when opening a fresh set and not mixing it with other Legos, there are still quite a large number of other ways to put the pieces to together. After multiple decades my mother still sometimes tells an anecdote about how flabbergasted I was at a friend in kindergarten who opened a set I got him as a gift, ignored the instructions, and proceeded to build some bespoke edifice with virtually no resemblance to the picture on the box. The sheer number of combinations exposed by the pieces that can number in the thousands for some sets that can be assembled either as the designer intended, completely differently, or even mixed and matched with other pieces from other sets to me feels far more like the parent comment description of exposing the underlying features, shipping a specific vision of them being assembled in a certain way, but allowing alternative visions to be constructed. What you're describing to me is more akin to building blocks; they're larger, more uniform, and only possible to put together in the ways that the designers intended. Stacking them up requires far less effort than putting together a Lego set, and you're not going to have trouble understanding how to stack some pieces so that they're relatively stable, but you're limited by the combinations of ways you can compose uniform cubes. You can't build an arch or bridge because gravity will get in the way, and you don't have the ability to make any other shapes out of the block material.