To be fair, most companies don't let you bring your "Introduction to Algorithms" textbook in with you for a whiteboard interview where they expect you to regurg

To be fair, most companies don't let you bring your "Introduction to Algorithms" textbook in with you for a whiteboard interview where they expect you to regurgitate exactly how to do Red Black trees or any of a hundred other concepts from memory, so having him memorize isn't necessarily awful.