pages 87 to 95

In this section Hofstadter uses the word play with anagrams as an example for learning something about the way human cognition works.
A lot - if not most - of our cognition occurs unconsciously. If we see the character string "4 + 5" somewhere we automatically parse it into the meaning of adding a quantity of five to a quantity of four and calculate the result. Of course this only occurs if we are able to read and have learned during some previous time about the concept of numbers and addition.
But as soon as one has gained this kind of knowledge one is not only able to perform this task automatically; in fact one can't even prevent this automatic analysis of happening.
Some subconscious levels of our cognitive system constantly analyse incoming signals and if these signals match what the area in question is specialized for a message is sent to higher cognitive areas bringing this finding into consciousness.
The same thing happens with anagrams. Hofstadter describes this phenomenon as to "sit back and watch" - because the level of influence we can take on the type of processing occuring during the building of anagrams is not really as high as one might tend to think.
Modern programs tend to use exhaustive search algorithms for all kinds of problems. These programs are not only capable of finding all possible solutions within their designated domain but they can also perform this task at incredible speeds.
However this type of processing is not even remotly similar to the way human cognition works.
Therefore Hostadter writes with respect to these types of programs:

I have little interest in them, aside from genuinely admiring the clever hacks
involved in programming them.

I strongly believe that this claim is very important. Because it becomes ever more obvious that our human mind works in a completely different manner than that.
Hofstadter introduces a concept of different levels of analysis, with the most fine-grained level running in parallel by using a bottom-up approach while specific higher levels running in a top-down manner are only triggered when appropriate.
All this happens totally automatically and intuitively. The structures underlying these automatisms and intuitions are precisely where the emphasis of research must lie.