When I was doing a lot of interviews I often wanted to give a simple problem that the person could code in 20 lines or so, and hopefully had another level that

When I was doing a lot of interviews I often wanted to give a simple problem that the person could code in 20 lines or so, and hopefully had another level that could be discussed after they'd shown some code. I found it surprisingly hard to come up with questions that could be explained quickly, especially across cultural boundaries. Things like ransom notes and anagrams would really just confound people to the point that they couldn't think about the underlying problem.