I don't hate puzzles, but my brain just refuses to work on something that is not important to me. That's why I can't play go/chess well, I can't do sudoku and I

I don't hate puzzles, but my brain just refuses to work on something that is not important to me. That's why I can't play go/chess well, I can't do sudoku and I can't solve algorithmic puzzles. Even when working on a real algorithmic problem, my brain just refuses to analyze whether something should be x or x+1. Those are things I can easily try and see. I had a number of technical interviews last month and the conclusion was that because of this, I'll never work for a company that uses this kind of interview process. I just can't take the puzzle questions seriously enough to be good at them. But the experience also made me question whether I am still a programmer. Fortunately, I have written some algorithmically complex software to convince myself that I am.