The key, I think, to hacking most interviews is to take into account the fact that most interviewers overoptimize for their own contribution to the process; i.e

The key, I think, to hacking most interviews is to take into account the fact that most interviewers overoptimize for their own contribution to the process; i.e., you want to put yourself on a path where the interviewers have some sort of insight into why you're valuable. This can be the traditional: wow, this person has mastered all these fields very well. But it can equally be: wow, this person did extraordinary things with this thing that I've heard good things about; or, wow: I could totally use a person like that on my team -- I think culturally this type of person is valuable; etc. Basically, you want to figure out the selection of likely thoughts the interviewer will have about you -- choose the set of most optimal, most distance-traversing in their mind (some of which ideally differentiate you for your peers), and give them some excuse to figure those out. It's, sadly, not completely unrelated to PUA, as our minds are trained to seek and, with cognitive dissonance, to esteem the general direction of what we've verified before. Fwiw, same pattern as setting traps in poker. Though hopefully you're not being duplicitous, but rather smoothing out an already error-laden, discontinuous situation.