I like solving weird, meaningless problems because they are a context for learning something new. I like solving problems that I don't know how to solve, *because **I** don't know how to solve them*.
I don't care if there's a "better" way to do it, because fundamentally I'm not interested in solving the problem. I'm interested in *learning* how to solve the problem, which is a subtle but very important distinction.
I just like learning stuff, period.