Comment by torginus

I think one is the feeling of community - we have a workplace leaderboard and we compete with each other, discuss solutions to the problems, how we overcame them etc.

The second is the timing and pacing - the fist few days are about warming up, then comes a couple decently challenging puzzles, after which the whole thing gets very difficult. Having the discipline to actually spend the time every day to do the puzzles feels like going back to the gym and actually sticking to it.

I also get to solve these kind of coding puzzles at work very rarely - maybe once every couple of months - so the whole thing feels like an intense workout for my brain.

The downside is of course is that it's exhausting - later puzzles often took 1-2 hours for me to solve - during days where I have work related stress, this is not easy.