Ugh I had someone ask me to debug a verbally communicated error message in an interview. Like they picked some random port configuration issue that had stumped

Ugh I had someone ask me to debug a verbally communicated error message in an interview. Like they picked some random port configuration issue that had stumped them for days in the past and thought cool let’s remove the internet, the command line, and ask people to solve it on the spot. I offered plenty of plans for how I would go about debugging, but I didn’t know the one simple trick. I agree with trying to use challenges that are closer to the real work, but it’s really hard to do that without over-testing domain knowledge. For instance, I ask candidates to do some asynchronous control flow. These are all candidates with js listed as their best language and I offer to let them look things up or to show them the promise apis they need, but a certain percent just refuse to engage with the problem because they don’t have the domain knowledge and seem to feel they’re being tested unfairly. The problem does a really good job of showing a candidates grasp of all the tricky parts of js, so I keep using it despite the drawbacks.