The name comes from Martial Arts; sparring is a form of practice that allows students of a martial art to try out the sum total of all their knowledge in practice.
Whilst katas are useful at building knowledge... At some point, it is necessary to assemble your experience into a much larger exercise.
The purpose of a larger "sparring" exercise is to simulate a real world scenario.
While doing these exercises you should retrospect on your previous decisions.
These exercises are split into multiple parts, it's important to not skip ahead