I would disagree Errant. If the problem was "Organize a list of 1 million words", then I would agree with you. With no context, it becomes little more than an a

I would disagree Errant. If the problem was "Organize a list of 1 million words", then I would agree with you. With no context, it becomes little more than an academic problem. But by giving the problem a context, the interviewer is asking for a much larger answer. In the case of this question, dealing with the most common words in the English language, the consumption of words is likely going to be significantly more difficult and critical to the accuracy of the final product than the sorting and hashing algorithms. If the goal of the question was to determine the applicants knowledge of sorting and hashing, then the question should have been stripped of context and presented as a purely academic "sort 1 million words by usage." question. On the other hand, if the goal of the question was to determine how the application approaches a problem, then his act of questioning the problem was a success, although the etiquette of his approach may have been a failure. -Rick