While I understand point people are making, I think understanding the problem is part of the debugging process, and should be a part of the puzzle and timer.
I remember entering programming competitions in high school and college. The first 5 minutes, when everyone is ripping open the envelope of their problem packet and trying to find the easiest problems was always very intense, and fun! Sometimes you would read through it too quickly, and miss a small detail that would render all the code you wrote completely useless. That's part of the challenge!
