So you nest the toy problem inside a toy system. For instance, instead of just asking people to tell you if someone has won tic-tac-toe (a trivial program-yours

So you nest the toy problem inside a toy system. For instance, instead of just asking people to tell you if someone has won tic-tac-toe (a trivial program-yourself-out-of-a-paper-bag exercise to establish confidence) ask them to design the server side of a client-server tic-tac-toe game. Start with the trivial problem, then move on to all the system design questions that you'll want a software engineer to ask in your system and which require serious communication on a team. (API design for the tic-tac-toe server? Application lifecycle? Scalability? Latency? Take your pick.)