I wouldn't want to work with a person whose idea of a useful job interview is:

"I'll pick an esoteric bullshit problem, put my nice guy hat on, and guide you towards the solution as I bask in your admiration of my largesse."

It's like when self-declared "nice guys" approach women: when you have to make an explicit point about how nice you are being right now, you're probably doing something very wrong.

Picking up loosely specified directions and filling up the gaps is indeed an important skill to have. If I had the time to describe the solution in the minutest detail to a co-worker, I would have the time to write it myself. Often, its a luxury that I dont have. In such situations I would certainly appreciate the skill that a co-worker can fill in the necessary detail from pointers and rough directions.

No point in arguing this further. These tests are fundamentally just a performative power trip masquerading as objective measurement — the perfect storm of software engineer bias.

For my taste the brevity and content of your story indicates a lack of introspection. It seems to me that the only option you consider is that the interviewee gets all the blame.

The reason for my suspicion is that independent of what happened there you should at least be aware that the story is not suitable to be shared in this form, because readers here only get your (very short too) story. Sure, you will get agreement - from people who jump to quick conclusions without actually having a basis for it. You are not even trying to give sufficient and/or unbiased information. I know this is just a forum and casual conversation, but to compare with science, which has the same issue of communicating one's ideas to other people, the equivalent would be a paper that only publishes the authors conclusions.

Some people may well not want to ask for help with a task during an interview seeing as its obvious that some interviewers may well mark you down for asking.

The?

We're talking about programming, so I am rather stumped by that word.

But I suppose if your goal is to select only candidates that you can drive towards a particular solution, then "the" might be appropriate.