I just had my ego smacked in another algorithmic interview with a large, fancy software company a few days ago (took too long to get too rough an answer). I li

I just had my ego smacked in another algorithmic interview with a large, fancy software company a few days ago (took too long to get too rough an answer). I like to think I'm not stupid - my current day to day developing gig is heavy on thinking & mathematics and I do OK with it - it's more than just "organization". It just seems like if I spent a few hours a week entering TopCoder competitions, in 6 months I could ace these things - but what end result skill is the interviewer really selecting for?