Question about encryption challanges in general

This is just a question about all the encryption challenges in general, and the question is:

Are the hashes meant to be cracked by using your head and finding patterns then reversing them? Or, are they meant to be cracked by a program such as brute-forcing them? I hope it is not the latter because I hate using brute-forcers, and it's a lot more fun to use my mind.

Use whatever you have to use to crack it.

Use whatever you have to to crack it.

edit: Sorry about double post.. servers are so slow.

Well other than number 1 and 7 I'm sure they all use your head to spot patterns to reveal a final key… which you then decrypt from a well known form of encryption

lol only Jake can decrypt md5's and none the less in his head :D lol