You're right, though I think he's talking about the weird type of interviewer who expects candidates to know obscure, non-intuitive optimal solutions to these p

You're right, though I think he's talking about the weird type of interviewer who expects candidates to know obscure, non-intuitive optimal solutions to these problems. I once met an interviewer who liked to use the "reverse a string" question, except he was expecting candidates to know the XOR trick. Suffice to say few, if anyone, ever got past his "filter". Primadonna interviewers who use interviews as ego-strokes are a problem in our industry. It's where the stupid "why are manhole covers round" questions came from, and it's where these hyper-optimized algorithms questions come from.