Personally, I think we as a community should all question that theater.

My sense is that it likely made sense before Campbell's law took effect. IIRC they developed a reputation in the early 2000s for only hiring very bright people who could solve those kinds of problems on the fly. Then 1. the company needed more employees and 2. people started grinding away practicing those problems so they could pass tests that were intended to filter them, and you got what you have now. Lots of other companies cargo-culted them in the meantime and thought the studying was the point, or maybe for them it was (measuring compliance instead of brilliance).

Also concurrently I think a lot of HR departments were increasingly trying to create an air of objectivity to reduce legal risk, which is also where you get the N years of experience crap (e.g. my company's HR just made us change wording from something like "strong ability" to "5 years experience" with Go. I don't even have 5 years of Go experience specifically and I'm the technical lead on the team. Actually the way Go's culture is, I wouldn't be surprised if a lot of experience with it were a negative as far as I'm concerned).