Your description sounds like intent, but it's important to keep in mind there is a selection force here. Ten earnest mathematicians try. 9 fail. The tenth stru

Your description sounds like intent, but it's important to keep in mind there is a selection force here. Ten earnest mathematicians try. 9 fail. The tenth structures the problem in such a way that the solution is meaningless but not obviously so-- his work gets published. But he doesn't know and certantly never intended to produce a meaningless proof. When useful proofs are harder to construct than difficult to detect as not useful trivial proofs, we should expect lots of the latter, even just by chance.