Fwiw... My go-to interview question has about four hard spots where people get stuck. I don't really care so much where you get stuck, so much as that you demon

Fwiw... My go-to interview question has about four hard spots where people get stuck. I don't really care so much where you get stuck, so much as that you demonstrate good thinking and deploy strategies for getting unstuck once you hit your limit, wherever it might be. And, yeah, points are given for actually getting unstuck. Strategies I want to see are along the lines of 'draw a picture' or 'work a small example, carefully, in full detail.' People who do these kinds of things /usually/ solve the 'hard part' they got to, and I give them a good review, wherever that was. People who don't manage to get unstuck tend to either a) not use simple problem solving strategies and/or b) get overly attached to an initial wrong idea. (and I totally agree: taking a walk is totally a valid problem solving strategy, though it isn't easy to incorporate into a time boxed interview...)