I don't think it is as you describe it though, the leetcode questions in interviews are usually just slightly rehashed. What would be interesting is giving some

I don't think it is as you describe it though, the leetcode questions in interviews are usually just slightly rehashed. What would be interesting is giving someone a puzzle they hadn't seen before. My wife can't remember formulas or algorithms for anything - she defends that by saying she can just look it up if she needs it. Saying that, we did Advent of Code last December and she came up with quite a few optimal solutions by first principle (albeit slowly). She'd suck getting through a leetcode interview. I'm quite lucky in that I remember these things really really easily but really struggle with truly novel problems. I just reach for my toolbox. I don't believe these interviews correlate with genuine intelligence, just a particular type of memory and question recognition.